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I am a former employee of one of your Edmonton, Alberta area Claire's locations. I didn’t mind piercing the ears of children who were excited to get new earrings, but nervous about the procedure. I’d do what I could to put them at ease. I had a couple "gray area" piercings, though; piercings where the children resisted heavily, were pressured and intimidated by the parents into settling down, and the children weren't happy with what had happened even after the earrings were in place and the standard lollipop had been dispensed. I didn't feel good about those, and I started to wonder at what point the piercer and the parent are actually violating a child's personal boundaries. Last week was a breaking point.

A seven year old girl came in to Claire's with her mother to get her ears pierced. I was to assist with the piercing, since it was what we call a "double," both ears at the same time. It's reserved for nervous kids who might change their mind after the first earring goes in. The girl pleaded and sobbed for thirty minutes not to be pierced. Despite Mom saying, "Honey, we can go home whenever you want," she was not letting her daughter go home. She was putting a great deal of pressure on her daughter to go through with the piercing. This child was articulate, smart, and well aware of herself and her body. She expressed that she didn't want us touching her, that we were standing too close, that she was feeling uncomfortable. She made it clear she no longer wanted to get her ears pierced. She begged, over and over again, for Mom to please, just take her home. That child's message was loud and clear to me: Do not touch my body, do not pierce my ears, I do not want to be here. I'm inclined to respect a child's right to say, "NO," to any adult forcing any kind of non-medical contact on them, so I told the other piercer I wouldn't be part of the ear piercing for this girl. To my great relief, in the end the mother respected her daughter's wishes, and took her home.

The next day at work, my manager asked about the previous day. I explained the child that refused the piercing and begged to be left alone, and I told my manager that I would not have been able to pierce that little girl's ears if Mom had insisted on it. I was firmly told, "You would have had no choice but to do it."

So I brought up the worst scenario I could think of. I wanted to know how far we were supposed to take this policy of piercing non-consenting children. "So if a mother is physically restraining her daughter, holding her down and saying, 'DO IT,' while that little girl cries and asks me not to, do I do the piercing?" My manager did not hesitate to respond, "Yes, you do the piercing."

I gave my notice that day. I had a choice between facing disciplinary actions (that would eventually lead to my termination) the next time I refused to pierce the ears of children who withdrew their consent, or leaving on my own terms. I chose the latter. My manager continues to assert that the other Claire's managers in this district are in agreement with her, and that our District Sales Manager confirms this policy is correct: Children can be held down and pierced. Children do not have a voice in the piercing process. The associate doing the piercing has no right to refuse to shoot metal through the ears of a child who begs not to be touched.

Your Policies and Procedures Manual offers only one policy, Policy 509, on the right to refuse a piercing. It is this: “We reserve to the right to refuse an ear piercing if a successful one cannot be done.” There is no mention of the use of physical restraint by the parent, or the employee’s right to refuse an ear piercing if their concerns are for the emotional welfare of the child. Basically, if I’m not going to get kicked in the head by that restrained child, or if that hysterical seven year old is unlikely to knock the gun from my hand, I must go ahead with the piercing.

This is, by my point of view, a deeply flawed policy that helps facilitate situations where children can be traumatized or otherwise subject to forms of intimidation and abuse in-store. The employee who refuses to be a party to these actions will be, “coached,” written up, and eventually terminated after enough write-ups.

I believe in upholding a child’s right to bodily integrity at all costs, and I will not be an adult that commits an indignity to a child. Kids who don’t want to endure the discomfort and pain of the procedure should not be forced to because a paying adult comes in, claims to be the legal guardian and insists upon the ear piercing. I cannot be part of a company that teaches a child that their right to say, “NO”, to invasive non-medical contact can be so easily overridden by an adult, and moreover, that they're supposed to accept that. This is about a child’s right to refuse to be pierced. This is also about an employee’s right to refuse to pierce the child that refuses to be pierced.

If you are a company that cares about kids, I implore you to consider changing this policy that blatantly ignores every child who vocally protests, cries, shows obvious signs of distress or is physically restrained by their alleged guardian while they sob and beg to be released. There needs to be something in place that protects both the rights of the child to protect his or her own body, and the right for the employee to refuse to pierce a heavily distressed child that adamantly refuses to have his or her ears pierced.

So I implore you now, as does everyone who shares this letter--Be better. Be accountable. Know what’s going on in your stores, and do something about it. And until you do, myself and perhaps many others have no interest in shopping at Claire’s and helping fund what we believe to be a cruel practice. Our children deserve better. Please do better by them.

Hello I'm new here. I'm an aspiring author and artist. I have an Instagram it's Mingmecha where I have some of my work. I'm 23 and manage a restaurant. I'm have many hobbies and interests and am a professional card game player as well. I value philosophy science and rational people. My goal is to meet other geniuses as other people have always dissapointed me all my life I've felt alone my fire is dimming as I have no real social relationships of real value. I fear that my literature will not reach the people I want it to but my goal is to at least have someone else who gets it. I've never accepted anything less then the world that ayn rand invisioned. In my fiction I plan to complete some of her philosophy that she hadn't got to for example music, general artifical intelligence, the role of transhumansism and bionic, discovering a metaphysical altering technology and more. I hope I can find a friend as that's my prime motive in posting here. Thank you for your time. Also I'm a 23 year old male for what it's worth giving the writing an identity.

> I plan to complete some of her philosophy that she hadn't got to for example music, general artifical intelligence, the role of transhumansism and bionic, discovering a metaphysical altering technology and more.

These are ambitious goals. Lots of people try these things and fail. What are you doing to accomplish this, and how does it differ from what's already been tried?

After learning chess and programming, I read *The Fabric of Reality* by David Deutsch, started having discussions with him, and got into philosophy. I think epistemology is the most important field. Bad intellectual methods harm progress in all other fields.

My studies have included writing/discussing a huge amount (I'm unaware of any philosopher who has done half as much) and these books, which are a list of some of the best: http://fallibleideas.com/books

BTW, regarding card games, I was the best Hearthstone player for a couple months early on. But I got tired of the game and quit. I also wrote guides.

I've found the world's intellectuals disappointing and unwilling to debate ideas or learn/think much. They are fakers pursuing social status. Their problems date back to childhood, where their minds are largely destroyed by around age 7, as Ayn Rand discusses in *The Comprachicos*. David Deutsch explained it in more detail by applying Critical Rationalist epistemology to parenting/education (the result is called Taking Children Seriously ).

Besides advancing philosophy, I've been trying to understand the world's irrationality and how to deal with it, and made some progress. Besides Deutsch's idea of static memes, I've developed the ideas of Paths Forward and Overreaching. Paths Forward is about how to organize ideas and debate so that people can collaborate effectively instead of ignoring corrections and criticisms that other people know and are willing to share. "Intellectuals" don't do this. Overreaching is about how people fail at learning philosophy because they do things which are too hard, and their error rate exceeds their ability to deal with errors. These ideas can help anyone who is trying to learn or advance philosophy.

I'm always looking for people who are interested in ideas enough, and honest enough, to learn what's already known about philosophy and then contribute something new.

#12102 I plan to figure that out I'm still young and learning, but I know I am capable. Seeing what others have done without an objectivist perspective on these issues have left them hit roadblocks. I plan to express these ideas in my novels in a romantic way. After I have done this I want to focus more on being a philosopher. Right now I don't have the time to dedicate myself to full time research but I will later after I have established my restaurant business more.

#12103 I take ideas very seriously I think you are the only person I've met who takes them to the ideal extent I'd like to be in. I just learned about popper and David through you I am going to start reading those books as soon as they arrive. I have read all rands books even her old magazine and her letters. Epistemology is something that interests me greatly because my novel right now is about music. Have you read Emotion in Life & Music : A New Science by Johnson, M. Zachary? He is an objectivist and has the best theory I've found on music. It's incomplete but I have some ideas for what's missing but it involves learning more into epistemology.

>Those Americans who have "independent minds dedicated to the supremacy of truth" are not all perishing, but many are doing what Oism was created to help us do, live on earth.

>In many cases, how we live is not to proselytize or promote Objectivism (or a less well-defined yet honest/independent/productive way to live) with overt acts or plans, but rather through living our lives and potentially the odd conversation every once in a while.

I am all for living on earth. I think careful discussion of ideas helps with that. I am doubtful that independent minds dedicated to the supremacy of truth would be satisfied with "potentially the odd conversation every once in a while." Also, it's not even an issue of promoting or proselytizing Objectivism -- you need to discuss Objectivism extensively in order to have a thorough, first-handed understanding of it *for yourself*. You need to do *thousands of error corrections* in order to understand a hard topic well: http://curi.us/2052-do-thousands-of-error-corrections

Rand pioneered Objectivism and helped us all enormously, but we still have to work -- a lot -- at understanding the details in our own minds. And if people are doing this, there should be some evidence.

> I plan to express these ideas in my novels in a romantic way. After I have done this I want to focus more on being a philosopher.

That seems backwards. You need to get the ideas right first, as well as you can, before writing novels to share them. When you focus more on being a philosopher, you will find out you were mistaken about some of your previous beliefs, and therefore that your novels contain mistakes that you could have avoided if you'd written them after you knew more.

One needs philosophy, particularly rational methods for thinking and learning, in order to do other things effectively. So one should be competent at philosophy (critical thinking skills, judging ideas, learning methods, understanding how to find and fix errors, etc.) before trying to do much else.

Our current cultural situation is: there are only a handful of competent philosophers. Unless you're at the top of the field, you're incompetent. It shouldn't be that way. It should be possible to just learn the basics and leave the rest to the experts while you do something else like a novel. But we don't live in that world. To get the basics of philosophy right makes you an expert today – and it's hard to get them right because most educational materials will teach you misconceptions. It currently takes extensive, serious study of philosophy, like a professional or expert, just to sort out the good ideas from the crap and become competent.

#12110 I understand that but at what point will I hold off my novels by continuing to pursue being an actual philosopher. I struggle with this because I have put in the work and studied everything not just in philosophy because I believe one must be a polymath to be a writer. After all you are creating another universe just as consitient as the rules that dictate our world. I wouldn't call myself a professional philosopher but I do know a quite alot. I tried going to ocon and talking with everyone and they always gave me this "who do you think you are kid" and I was so resentful that no one wanted to listen or challenge some inconsistencies in there objectivism. Now I'm all for ayn rand being a genius but she died before she could finish epistemology. I guess what I'm saying is I'm not sure how far to postpone my writing for the virtue of accuracy and innovative ideas. But I value the truth more. I don't know the solution to that.

>The threat of jail and being exposed to poor ideas are very different motivations, and I think those who realize the sacredness of their fire rarely let it go out.

Ideas rule the world. The Fountainhead:

>When the agents were gone, Wynand pressed a button on his desk, summoning Alvah Scarret. Scarret entered the office, smiling happily. He always answered that buzzer with the flattered eagerness of an office boy.

>“Alvah, what in hell is the Gallant Gallstone?”

>Scarret laughed. “Oh, that? It’s the title of a novel. By Lois Cook.”

>“What kind of a novel?”

>“Oh, just a lot of drivel. It’s supposed to be a sort of prose poem. It’s all about a gallstone that thinks that it’s an independent entity, a sort of a rugged individualist of the gall bladder, if you see what I mean, and then the man takes a big dose of castor oil—there’s a graphic description of the consequences—I’m not sure it’s correct medically, but anyway that’s the end of the gallant gallstone. It’s all supposed to prove that there’s no such thing as free will.”

Consider the effect a bad culture will have on whether or not people wind up realizing the sacredness of their fire.

#12111 I think you should do what you can to test your knowledge. Talking to people at OCON was a good thing to try. I tried HBL and every other online Objectivist forum I found, instead, as well as several local Objectivist groups.

Do you have essays which people can review to tell you about some of your mistakes or missing knowledge, if they can spot it? (Or, in the alternative, they could agree with you and learn from you.) You should have some accomplishments where you say "I think this is good" and challenge anyone to tell you something you're missing. You should have something to represent the quality of your thinking which people can look at. These accomplishments should begin smaller – e.g. a few essays before a novel – so that you can get feedback more quickly with less work invested. Some of the early ones should be philosophy related so that your philosophy knowledge can be tested.

Also, you should survey all the major philosophies and have positions on them. That doesn't mean studying them all. It means having a general understanding of them (a survey book that covers many philosophies is OK). Then, either judge each philosophy is valuable and learn more, or else if you think it's bad then find a refutation of it written by anyone. That refutation should be held up as a challenge to people – can you refute this? – just like your own personal accomplishments. (And, again, readers may learn from it rather than attempt to knock it down. It gives people both options, a positive or negative reaction.) If errors are pointed out in the refutation you have accepted of a philosophy, then you should give the topic more attention to better understand what the existing arguments on the matter are and what position you should take (and whether you should actually start reading primary sources).

So instead of saying, "Marx? I haven't considered him yet." You say, "Marx? His views were refuted by Mises in his economic calculation argument and his book, *Socialism*. Did Mises make a mistake? Do you know something I'm missing?"

In the case where there are no quality refutations of a philosophy – no one has pointed out what's wrong with it - then it might be right and merits some attention now. It's not safe to ignore it. What if there are many bad ideas which haven't been refuted? Most bad ideas can be refuted in short, simple ways by reusing general purpose arguments. E.g. if philosophy P is subjectivist, then you can point to a refutation of subjectivism in general, rather than something which deals with philosophy P in particular.

These are some of the things I talk about in my Paths Forward material, and which I try to do as part of how I organize my knowledge and deal with the world. I find people don't do this, which means they ignore ideas I consider correct with no reason given, and also they don't put forward some of their own ideas to be criticized (and are actually willing to respond to questions and and criticisms – some people have a book or blog, but challenging the public to point out errors, and actually addressing counter-arguments, is rare.)

> Have you read Emotion in Life & Music : A New Science by Johnson, M. Zachary?

Since you brought it up, I checked his blog and found some good points, so I looked through some of the book. I like some parts but also find major errors like his acceptance of psychiatry and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) in ch. 1. (For my answer to that, see Thomas Szasz's books.) I find some parts vague and fuzzy, like his claim that music is superior to other types of art (ch. 8). There are lots of minor errors like how he views "solipsism" – he doesn't seem familiar with that specific philosophy and then talks about the word like it has a less specific meaning. This stood out to me because solipsism is treated in a much more precise way in *The Fabric of Reality*. For Zachary's book, I don't think he should have mentioned solipsism at all. Another detail error was:

> The culture of ancient Greece, with its incredibly focussed and economical poetic and musical expression, with its exquisitely simple beauty and strangely pregnant melodic-emotional content, was first smashed by a conquest by the materialistic Romans (in the Battle of Corinth, 146 BC).

Athens was smashed by conquest, by Sparta, before that. Also, I object to using the word "materialistic" negatively.

I agree that with lots of what he says about emotions being based on ideas not genes, and often being related to childhood baggage that people haven't untangled. I think he makes it sound much easier to sort out than it actually is, though. I also agree that evil exists and that can be hard for more rational people to comprehend, and there's a problem and danger there. It's also dangerous to declare people evil and stop trying to interact rationally (what if I make an incorrect judgment like that!?), so this is a hard topic.

> The special method of the enemies of reason is relentlessness. Since they are not focussed on any productive activity, all of their energy can be channeled into the war on reason. Reason is a sorting faculty, which deals with incoming data by conceptualizing it and organizing it. Its enemies know the surest way to defeat reason: swamp it, overload it, confuse it, crush it under a weight of nonsense. Never give it a chance to achieve the clarity it needs.

I think the answer to this is developing reusable criticisms which refute entire categories of ideas. I don't think reason, properly organized, gets overloaded. Once you know a lot of criticisms of common errors, it gets hard to come up with new ideas that aren't *already* refuted. To save time, we must criticism patterns of error instead of every error individually. If someone finds ideas overwhelming to deal with, it indicates a problem with their knowledge and thinking methods. I think a harder aspects evil to deal with are, in general, *dishonesty* and *violence*, and, in our current culture, *social status contests*.

> The **intensity** parameter is the force or strength of the music; it is a function of volume or the *amount of sound*, including simple loudness, and two forms of pitch density: the complexity of simultaneous sonorities, and the effect on any given moment of music of the full context that preceded and prepared it.

This is the first time he uses the word "sonorities" in the book. He doesn't explain what it means. I don't know enough about music to know what he's talking about. Maybe what he's saying refers to technical knowledge about music and makes sense and can clearly communicate to someone with the appropriate background. But this is one example of how his communication about music is not suitable for a lay reader.

Looking it up, I find out it means giving sound, or giving a clear or loud sound. If there is a technical meaning so this word communicates some important detail, I'm not seeing it. If it's just a fancy word with a simple meaning, then I don't think he's explaining well. I thought this word would have to have a special meaning for the passage to be meaningful.

Does the passage just mean this?

> Musical intensity comes from loudness, from using multiple sounds at once [somehow], and from interplay [somehow] between sound at different times.

Also, is there a particular passage focused on music which you think is great and which is readable by a non-expert?

> I deplore the current use of [the word 'Islamophobia'], since it implies that there is some peculiar & irrational state of mind from which all objections to Islam proceed... I think of ‘homophobia’ as a similar word, designed to close all debate about a matter in which only one view is now deemed permissible.

> We .... are entering a dangerous social condition in which the direct expression of opinions that conflict – or merely seem to conflict – with a narrow set of orthodoxies is instantly punished by a band of self-appointed vigilantes.

(BTW curi is completely clueless about that. Doesn't get it. Doesn't get anything really. His parents (or somebody) abused him and he coped with it by becoming this pathetic. It's a life long journey of proving Mama wrong.)

> (BTW curi is completely clueless about that. Doesn't get it. Doesn't get anything really. His parents (or somebody) abused him and he coped with it by becoming this pathetic. It's a life long journey of proving Mama wrong.)

You're boring. If you have something to say regarding refutation, why don't you offer criticism instead of bland hate? I assume it's because you actually have nothing to say and are a poseur. Prove me wrong if you can. Otherwise, fuck off.

>But one of my points is that at some level of understanding the law of diminishing returns comes in, and that plus opportunity costs makes me less likely to spend time talking about Oism the more I understand it

I don't think "diminishing returns" applies here, at least not in a straightforward way. If you got world class at understanding Objectivism, that would let you accomplish stuff in a variety of fields that you wouldn't be able to otherwise. Perhaps, given some set of goals, going *past* the point of world class would be unnecessary -- like you wouldn't want to be pioneering the next level of breakthroughs in Objectivism if philosophy wasn't your primary interest. But getting to world class in the first place is totally worth it.

And if somebody's world class at something, there's some evidence. George Reisman, for example, is a great economist, and it shows up in his writing. He studied under Rand and Mises. He's not a professional philosopher, but he's got tons of understanding of Objectivism.

I think people underestimate the level of philosophy knowledge that would be helpful to them in *any* goal by a huge factor, and also overestimate the philosophy knowledge they actually have (especially in terms of how much they've integrated it into their life versus learned it as concepts that aren't well integrated).

Also, regarding the role of discussing ideas in effective thinking, see

If you don't organize your learning/thinking/etc you're kinda wasting your time. You'll do stuff like reinventing incorrect versions of knowledge that is already well-developed and available to read. But inspiration matters too, being free to try stuff instead of just following a plan.

Solution? Organize your learning but also have free time. Aim for a minimum of 50% of your time to do organized/planned stuff every month. The amount of other stuff can vary based on inspiration, but it shouldn't take over a whole month, that's dangerous.

> I referred earlier to the price setting arrangements which were established in the Soviet Union. There, economists located in the Gosplan offices were responsible for this function, and as an understanding of the implications of von Mises' arguments concerning the inherent incapacity of a socialist economy to generate prices for all the goods and services which are characteristic of a modern economy permeated through the West---it took forty years or more for that to happen---the question arose: Where did prices in the Soviet Union come from?

> In the late seventies and early eighties, American economists began to travel to the Soviet Union and Gordon Tullock, an American economist who should have received the Nobel Prize for his work in public choice theory, took the opportunity, on a visit to Gosplan in Moscow, to ask that very question. Rather sheepishly his respondent took out a rather ancient Sears Roebuck catalogue from his desk and handed it over. Tullock didn't know what to make of this until it was explained that the Gosplan officials used the prices quoted for goods in the catalogue to obtain relativities between this and that item. They would then try to match the goods of the catalogue to what was available in the Soviet Union and then fix prices according to the relativities prescribed by Sears Roebuck. Where there was no match of product they just had to guess. So prices in the USSR were determined by Sears Roebuck.

> What is extraordinary about the Soviet Union, in retrospect, was that it lasted so long, and was, for so long, such a very real threat to the West.

I agree with all of Objectivism (I mean Rand said, not anyone else), as far as it goes. That is, I think it is contextual knowledge. I'm unaware of any substantial errors where Rand had a worse view than the standard view, or clearly should have known better at the time. I regard Rand as by far the best philosopher.

I'll bring up two areas where I disagree, but in neither case do I blame her. You have to start with what humanity already knows and improve things from there. One can't normally be blamed for not having made even more improvements.

Note, this is not normal. Most people, even some of the best people, have a mix of good ideas and bad ideas. When they try to have different ideas (different than mainstream/standard/tradition), they improve some ideas and they end up with worse ideas in some cases. Popper, for example, made a lot of big mistakes. Lots of his views are far worse than knowledge he had available. He rejected some great ideas like, in short, classical liberalism and economics.

Back to Rand, I think she is wiser about femininity and gender roles than other people in general. She understands them better than regular people who accept them (understanding how they work and which parts are good or bad). And I think the people who just reject gender roles are, in general, clueless radicals. But I think she overrates the value of gender roles for extremely good, rational people like Dagny. I don't accept them as an ideal or a necessary part of life (we're born tabula rasa, not with a gendered mind). I won't go into why because this is a big topic and I don't think it's what you wanted to focus on, and it's not a major part of Objectivism anyway.

As far as epistemology goes, Rand said nothing about CR (Critical Rationalism). She said very little about induction. What she did say was either along the lines of the standard view or better. She said she didn't know all the answers about induction (hadn't studied it), and she was aware of some hard parts, some problems, which she personally didn't know the answers to (having not studied it). I think she believed there must be answers because clearly we do learn stuff, science works, reason works, etc. The parts of epistemology where she had more to say is great stuff. So basically, in epistemology, she improved some things and left some other things alone.

CR says that the problems with induction are insurmountable (and gives improved arguments beyond the prior anti-inductive criticism), and says that the same goals can be achieved by a different method. This can be accepted while changing very little about Objectivist epistemology, because Objectivist epistemology doesn't rely on or talk about particular details about how induction works. It just relies on us being able to learn in a way connected with reality, which uses observation somehow, and results in genuine, contextual knowledge. CR offers that. So you just use that instead of induction and it doesn't change much because the rest of Objectivist is reasonably separate.

I have found some Objectivists don't mind this perspective, but some are really hostile to any disagreement with induction. I'll pause here and see what you think of the outline of the situation, without going into what CR actually says.

>> He says my ideas are wrong. He selected one example to present, but it illustrates his own dishonesty.

> I consider this slander, because I disagree with your premise (explained subsequently in your post) that he evaded your point. In fact, he engaged with you on that point at length (the "eyes are opinionated" topic). In my view, you were completely wrong on that and his position is right. However, if I recall correctly, I didn't think (at the time) he handled that in exactly the right way. I would have agreed with him, but I would have said something a bit different. Anyway, to say that he evaded your point is, in my opinion, completely mistaken.

I appreciate the detailed response. It's too much to debate all at once, and it might be better to try talking CR instead. First, I'm going to respond to one point and see how it goes. I picked this one because it says "slander".

I think you're factually mistaken. I wrote in an epistemology post:

>>> As Popper put it: all observation is theory-laden. You need theories first. Raw observation is both impossible (because e.g. our eyes are opinionated--they let us see green but not infrared) and worthless (because there're infinitely many characteristics and patterns out there that one could observe).

HB quoted a partial sentence and said:

>> Is this serious? As stated, it is wild primacy of consciousness.

Later in that post he also said:

>> (I'm reminded of Quine's gavagai "problem," if you are familiar with that.)

> How so? There are many different possible designs for eyes, and we have a particular one with various strengths (can see green) and weaknesses (can't see ultraviolet). This isn't a claim about consciousness.

Regarding gavagai problem, I said:

> Do you have a refutation of it? I took a look at it and I thought the basic point is correct (that any finite data set is compatible with infinitely many patterns or interpretations.)

> This is one of the major logical issues I've been talking about. I think it refutes some claims about epistemology. One needs an epistemology that doesn't run into this problem. I have that. You don't.

So here, HB had brought up a named version of one of the major issues we were debating. Despite being tangential to the thing about eyes, it was highly on topic to what we'd been discussing before that. Great. And I asked if he had any answer to that problem he brought up (he'd put "problem" in quotes and his epistemology position requires an answer to it) and he did not reply.

This was not the only exchange related to eyes and perception. Here's another:

ET:

>>>> Also, as a scientific matter, computation is done on the information from our eyes before it reaches our mind.

HB:

>>> No computation is done there. That’s metaphor. There’s no computation done anywhere outside the human mind. Even computers don’t actually compute. In philosophy, we have to speak literally, not metaphorically.

ET:

>> I was speaking literally. Have you read science about our visual system? Information from the eye is processed in an lossy (irreversible, information-losing) way before it reaches the mind. In short, visual information is simplified according to some algorithms specified by our genes prior to perceiving it.

>> This is just like if you’re writing an iOS photography app but don’t have access to the raw images from the camera, only images which iOS has already modified with some algorithms. (Offhand, I think apps can access raw images now, but couldn’t in the past.)

>> But I don’t know what you’re talking about by saying computers don’t compute. My computer can compute 2+3 and NAND among many other things. I guess you must be using some non-standard definition of computation? To understand me, it’s important to read what I’m saying with my terminology, not some alternative terminology you prefer. (This came up a lot with Popper, too, where words he used were read with an Objectivist meaning instead of Popper’s own meaning.)

HB didn't respond substantively to this. All he said was:

> Read it? I worked as intern for over a year with one of the field's greats: Richard Held.

> I am not up on the the discoveries made since the 60s, however; but I don't think what you reference is anything discovered since then. By the way, Jerry Letvin, who discovered the fact that you cited earlier about frog vision, was also at MIT at that time.

The pattern here is *not* patient explanation from HB for several iterations and then giving up eventually. I never got basic answers about what he meant about some things. Note that my conception of computation is not a Popperian thing, it's standard (today but maybe not in the 60's, I don't know, that's rather early in the field of computers) in our society among people who deal with computation, e.g. among software developers, AI researchers, and physicists (who have a theory of quantum computation, among other things, which btw my mentor David Deutsch helped develop).

> State steps you already took to find the answer yourself, and why they didn't work.

> Give specifics. I don't have a solution to "I am sad". That describes millions of different problems. (If you want a very general purpose answer like "Then do problem solving." you can state that you want a general case answer with no specifics.)

#12142 I don't have a solution to "How do I get back in touch with my emotions?". That describes millions of different problems. You should state steps you already took to find the answer yourself, and why they didn't work.

Well, I learned how to meditate except that usually places me further away from my emotions. Most of my time is usually invested in doing hobbies by myself, during which I'm very good at keeping in touch with my mental and emotional state. However outside of this, like with other people, it all goes tits up. I'm unable to feel things or have much thoughts at all that involve people other than myself. Not like narcissistic. It's just an inability to be involved.

So lately I tried cybering with a stranger and it felt mostly awkward and creepy. I basically had to ignore my inner voice and just do what I thought would be the most genuine way to follow the intimacy meme. Interacting this way was like off-and-on feelings, and overall kinda bad.

Some time before this I went to a group event but was unable to approach anyone because my mind kept going blank.

And I recently was hanging out on a discord server for one of my interests and I couldn't relate with anyone. Most of my questions seemed to confuse and annoy everyone. So I ended up leaving.

I don't think I'm that interested in cis women tbh. When I was cybering it was with a guy older than me and I thought there was a faint possibility of living with him in the future (quickly realized he was just fishing when his account went inactive the next day). I sort of dated a girl when I was younger. I dunno if I feel the same way anymore. Nearly all social games I want to avoid cause they feel immoral.

The desire to be emotional is to bring back 'the light', if that makes any sense. Life feels empty and pointless without feelings, even if problems are being solved. Which is why I'm suspecting I haven't found the right problems. Except I don't know where to look anymore and a lot of the time I'm finding myself looking for the exit to Life.

The linked social dynamics are relevant to any type of social interaction. It teaches what the social games are and how they work. You can do some of them or you can have poor rapport with most people, your choice.

> The desire to be emotional is to bring back 'the light'

Conventional emotions are shallow and superficial. You were indoctrinated with memes. It never added real meaning to your life.

If you want to get it back, embrace being normal more. E.g. become Christian, that's some heavy duty stuff to reconnect you to tradition/convention.

If you want a rational alternative, learn Objectivism and FI. Objectivism might resonate with you, so try that. If it doesn't work easily, you'd have to learn it via intellectual study, which is a big project which you don't have teh prerequisites for, but you could work towards it over a period of several years if you cared enough and were honest enough.

This isn't strictly related to conventions as far as I can tell. I was fairly happy as a child and the world had that full spectrum of color emotionally, regardless of the activity. Also not sure if you're partially or directly arguing something about traditional memes having to do with feeling the impact of thoughts and actions. It's considerably more involved than that.

#12150 You seem rather lost, unskilled, and now to be trying to argue with me instead of understand what I was saying. You didn't even ask a question this time.

I don't think helping you is in my interest. You haven't shown value and I don't expect you to stay long. I don't think I'll benefit from writing five high-effort comments next, while you say things of the same quality as you have so far, and then you leave without explanation after that.

If I didn't feel lost and looking for help I wouldn't be here. I thought a question was implied the way my post was phrased. Sorry if there's miscommunication. I'm not that good at intellectual stuff. Does that mean I'm not worth your time? Like, I said, point me in the right direction if this isn't the place for me.

> Is it possible that the "eyes are opinionated" issue came up between you and HB more than once (i.e. in separate threads) on HBL?

Not with the word "opinionated" (I searched), but the topic did come up more than the two exchanges I discussed in my grandparent comment.

> But it may be that the "eyes are opinionated" discussion came just as he was in the stage of cutting you off. I strongly suspect that that is exactly the case.

I checked.

Discussion began Oct 17, 2016, and ended Nov 16. I said "eyes are opinionated" on Nov 6, not at the end. It's actually about half way because I initially discussed some other topics and posted criticism of some of Popper's errors. I think debate about Popper and epistemology began in earnest on Oct 26 when I wrote this: http://curi.us/1921-the-harry-binswanger-letter-posts#c7085

So "eyes are opinionated" came around the middle of the debate. Note that in the linked post, rather than simply presenting an alien context, I did translations between contexts.

> P.S. Thanks for keeping things compact and civil so far! After my last post, which ran up to reddit's 10,000-char limit, I was afraid the conversation would spiral out of control.

Ditto. So far you're very easy to deal with, and civil, for someone with such a negative pre-existing opinion about me.

> Assuming that you are not a Kantian and also don't consider computers to be conscious (as a pan-psychic might), you and HB are really just objecting to the way the other uses certain words, rather than expressing an underlying philosophical disagreement.

I thought it was partly a terminology issue at the time, but I struggled to get others to acknowledge that and let me clarify what I and Popper meant by things. I found it was an ongoing problem. Hence HB attacked me for the earlier "opinionated" statement when he banned me, rather than accepting my clarifications of my view.

I have no interest in defending the way I used the word "opinionated". I can say that in other ways. But my use of "computation" is important in many fields, is precise IMO, and I don't know of any replacement terminology. What *do* computers do? What should "quantum computation" be called? And, related, are AGIs possible to build in principle?

---

I'm open to going into additional detail about the HBL exchanges or to discussing CR at this point. I think you see now that I have detailed reasoning for what I wrote about HB, so maybe, without persuading you, that is enough to set it aside for now. If you want to discuss CR now, you could reply to my HBL post linked above, or ask a question or say whatever else.

So I read a bunch of articles on that girl chasing site and everything about it seems alien and unwanted and totally unlike anything I have ever thought about wanting or even witnessed personally. I'm not looking to become a predator.

Also wondering if the lack of reply to #12152 means I'm unwelcome here. Since I'm too dumb to understand your perspective.

#12154 You haven't pointed out a single error. It explains how social dynamics actually works, in fact, whether you like it or not. It does not advocate being a predator; you shouldn't slander things without quotes or knowledge; your message is low quality.

It's an explanation from a particular perspective I am not interested in learning. Obviously this is not true for all people and cultures across the planet. Not sure why I have to spell out 'errors' in something I don't want or need.

I dunno. The material is being presented in a way like I would be preying on normal people by studying their ways and patterns. To my knowledge it's not slander to give my impression of what something makes me feel.

A friend introduced me to this place when I was younger and learned some things that broke a lot of normal functioning behaviors. They were also broken well before introducing me, apparently. But they're now better off and I'm not and I don't know how to fix the connection between my head and heart. So I thought I'd try coming back to where stuff started getting a lot worse for me. To be extra clear, I don't know the extent of blame for how things got worse. I just know stuff happened here. It could be all my fault.

I currently reside in canada but I do not identify as canadian (I don't know or talk to any natives except for small things like ordering food). I doubt I could find my old posts, especially given the state I'm in.

re HBL, yes I think that's part of it. I found lots of the debate topics unpredictable because they weren't about things Rand wrote. The math, big numbers, measurement error and computers stuff aren't part of Objectivism. They also aren't something I'd run into at any other Objectivist forum, online or IRL. And the rejection of fallibilism contradicts Rand.

I think we have disagreements about physics and computers. It's not just terminology.

In this post (and going forward, unless you refuse) I'll use my terminology re "compute". I think this is important. "Compute" will refer to what computers do (computers also "process" "information" or "data", and "run" "algorithms" or "software", all of which is equivalent to math). For what consciousnesses do which present-day computers do not do, I'll use the word "think" (also: guess, conjecture, hypothesize, brainstorm, conclude, figure out, judge, ponder, surmise, believe, conclude, etc.)

With that said, I'll try to explain eyes and see if we can agree there or not.

Our eyes have a particular nature or identity which was developed by biological evolution. E.g. they can see green but not ultraviolet. Our eyes give us some information about reality but not all information. Our eyes are a type of camera and work similarly to artificial cameras we've built. There's no fundamental difference. It's not like computers vs. minds (consciousness is a fundamental difference there).

The information from our eyes can be misleading *if* interpreted incorrectly. This is not the eyes' fault. The error is in the thinking about what one saw, not in the eyes. E.g. if my table looks blurry, that doesn't mean it is blurry – actually my eyes are physically deformed. Our eyes just follow the laws of physics and give us information. Using that information correctly can be complicated. Eyes can be damaged or broken just like a car motor. You'd never call a motor "wrong" or "misleading", but you would blame it as the explanation for why your car isn't moving and get it repaired. Similarly, I can blame my eye being partially broken or damaged for why the table looks blurry, and repair it with laser eye surgery or fix the issue with glasses.

Understanding the information from our eyes can be hard even when they're in perfect working condition. A straight stick looks bent when partially in water, but isn't. Men 10,000 years ago could learn it's not bent, and to be wary of what they see underwater, but a scientific understanding of what's actually happening was way beyond them. This is because our vision is related to how photons travel. Similarly, desert mirages are due to complicated properties of how light works (blue light from the sky travels beneath eye level and then back up, which is why people think they see blue below them. Then they assume it's water because of the color and apparent location).

This means: the correctness of our observations of reality depends on the correctness of the ideas by which we interpret the information provided by our eyes. If we make conceptual errors regarding the nature of our eyes, we can reach incorrect conclusions like that a smooth table isn't smooth, that a straight stick is bent, or that there's something blue below eye level when there isn't.

Furthermore, our minds do not have access to raw image data. I'll begin with iPhone cameras. The camera captures raw data, then the CPU computes mathematical/software algorithms with the raw image data as input and a different image as output. The goal is making the photos look better. The photo I see on screen and save on disk is different than the raw data the camera had. It's impossible, in principle, to reconstruct the raw camera data from the saved image.

So to understand what is really there in reality, using an iPhone photo, you must consider not only the nature of the camera it uses, but also the nature of the computations done to the image data.

Human vision works this way too. After the eye captures raw data, that data is processed and changed before one's mind gets it. Irreversible computation happens. To correctly interpret what is really out there, we must know something about the nature of our eyes *and* know something about the nature of the mathematical/software algorithms which take the raw vision data and input and output modified data.

There are many possible cameras and data processing algorithms. Some are better than others. Some are more useful. Some show the world upside down, and some show it right side up. Some see green light and some don't.

I regard the factual claims I've made as part of science.

None of this prevents us from using our vision to learn about reality. The nature of our eyes, and of the computation done on the raw image data, is not chaotic or arbitrary. It's consistent and understandable. Vision follows the laws of physics and the nature of the physical objects involved (table, photons, eye, optic nerve).

I would say we don't "directly" see a table, in my terminology, because the visual information that gets to our mind has causality like this: table -> photons -> eyes -> computation -> mind. It's not just table -> mind. (BTW we could actually break it down in more detail with more steps.) However, there is a real connection between the vision information my mind has access to and reality. I don't see illusions or delusions or what a trickster demon wants me to see. I see what it looks like when a particular type of camera, with particular data processing algorithms, is hit by photons coming from that table.

> Agreed. Though, as an aside, my view is that mistakes are possible in general, but some things are simple enough to be certain about in a given context, such as 1+1=2 (which I don't think you need sophisticated mathematics to reach, or to prove). I presume HB agrees with that, as far as that goes.

I don't see what simplicity has to do with it and I find your statement ambiguous.

Is the issue: Can I get a 100% guarantee that this idea is the best possible idea given the current context? No. I could have been dishonest or unreasonable. I could have made a mistake when evaluating the available evidence and conceptual understanding. There's no way to absolutely guarantee those things didn't happen. This is the same whether it's something simple or complicated.

One doesn't need a 100% guarantee. What one needs is a judgment or conclusion. Thinking has to reach a point where you accept an idea, reject alternatives, and move forward. It can reconsidered in the future if new arguments are thought of or new evidence is found, but that's uncommon. At any given time, most conclusions stand and are not currently being reconsidered (so our ideas are largely stable, not in constant chaos).

So is the issue: Can I reach a conclusion? Can I stop pondering further and decide something and move on? Can I attain *knowledge* and act on it? Yes. And this doesn't depend on whether the issue is simple or complicated. We do this with complicated stuff too, e.g. judging that Rearden Metal is good was a complicated judgment but it was nevertheless possible to reach a conclusion about that matter. Simple stuff isn't special.

If "certain" means: "qualifies as knowledge, is good enough to form a judgment and proceed" then we have that not only with basic math but with many complicated things too. But if "certain" refers to 100% guarantees against error, then I don't think we can have that even with very simple stuff. So I don't see what fundamental difference simple vs. complex makes. It's just easier, as a matter of degree, to acquire knowledge about simple stuff. It takes less thought to reach a conclusion.

> Those two perspectives are equally valid.

and

> there is no one canonical representation of the table

You're not wrong, but: Some perspectives/representations are convoluted. Some are less useful for biological evolutionary survival value. Some are less useful for the pursuit of human values. Just because one can mathematically convert between two things shouldn't make one indifferent between them. (Also some perspectives are actually incorrect, but I think we're just discussing correct ones.)

I believe a lot of what Objectivism and CR are actually about, and the quest for knowledge in general, is how to break symmetries, how to prefer some representations or perspectives, how to differentiate things, how to get away from "there are infinitely many representations, which are compatible with all the data, and aren't wrong" (something CR uses against induction, because we think induction fails to solve that problem, and it has to be handled a different way) or "there are infinitely many places you could put the origin on that graph. with a different origin, that point at 2,2 could be at 3,3, or 7,42, or -20,-999, or at any other coordinates" or "there are infinitely many possible aliens who could be tricking us, in any of infinitely many arbitrary ways using infinitely many different logically possible advanced technologies". Each of the ways aliens could be tricking us is a perspective which is not factually, empirically wrong nor does it violate the rules of logic. Each alien scenario, if complete enough, comes with a representation of each table, sometimes as a hologram or anything else instead of as wood, and that representation is logically compatible with all our sensory evidence. Nevertheless, that kind of thinking is dangerous and can lead to postmodernism, skepticism, etc. FWIW I find the attitudes of some Objectivists like "just dismiss the arbitrary" as not a good enough answer, I think a more detailed rebuttal is merited and that CR has it. And, technically, there is no easy way to exactly define which things are arbitrary – that's a big part of the problem is actually figuring out, in a principled and comprehensive way, which things are arbitrary junk ("I know the arbitrary when I see it" is inadequate).

> We just need to form non-contradictory beliefs about our existence, in the widest possible context. For all intents and purposes, we just call that reality, but we don't actually know that there isn't a wider context beyond the one we have.

>

> So for instance, it "could be" the case (but it's arbitrary to assert that it either is or isn't) that all of our perceptions are merely simulated (like in the Matrix).

I *know* that I'm not living in a solipsistic dream world in the same way that I know 1+1=2. I used rational thinking to reach a conclusion. There are no counter-arguments that I irrationally ignored; all known counter-arguments have known refutations. I believe there are no known flaws, today, with my claim, and no reason to reopen it for further investigation. That is my judgment. (The arguments against solipsism which persuaded me are in *The Fabric of Reality* by David Deutsch.)

I also *know* that I don't live in the particular simulation presented in The Matrix. It's ridiculous. I'll omit the arguments though.

I think Rand would call this knowledge and would disagree with your "don't actually know". You don't need a absolute 100% proof to know something.

There are some simulation scenarios for which I'd say I don't know, I haven't reached a conclusion. (I know some anti-simulation arguments but I haven't spent a lot of time considering it, and I haven't decided they are conclusive, I'm not yet ready to make a judgment.) Then what? I consider: *Given that I haven't reached a conclusion about that issue, what should I do, what should I believe, and how should I act?* I reach conclusions about that. So while I may be stuck on some intellectual puzzles, I'm not stuck regarding living my life. What to believe is easy: that I don't know. How to act is: the same as if I wasn't living in a simulation. There are no behavior changes that would make sense. I have reasoning for that, but I'll omit it.

> To me, the fact that there is further transformation of the raw data after the eye makes an initial impression is of interest to science, but not particularly of interest to philosophy.

I agree.

> I object to this. Ancient humans (e.g. Greeks) were able to know a lot about what is out there, and they didn't know anything about the "algorithms" that modify the raw impression formed by the eye before the sense data is available to the mind.

They did know a lot about how to interpret the vision data which reached their minds so that their interpretation matched reality – which means, it correctly accounted for the nature of photons and of the human vision system.

It doesn't have to be scientific style knowledge, or written out as computer code or math, to be knowledge. They knew that water and smoke can distort vision, that blurry vision or blindness in general are faults of the visual system not of the external world (but that there are exceptions like fog and blindfolds), that human vision is orderly but can be unreliable in low light conditions, that an apple looks like an apple regardless of which country you're in or which day of the week it is, and so on. They knew their vision didn't make many special exceptions, and they knew some of the exceptions. That's a good understanding of the situation. I imagine they knew that accurate depth perception is hard in some cases, and much harder if you only have one eye. They knew their visual system was limited by distance, and that this was an issue of vision not reality (if they walked closer to a distant farmhouse, it's their vision which changes as they get closer, not the farmhouse itself). They knew, roughly, how light works: it goes in straight lines, does not go through most objects (opaque) but does go through some (transparent). You can't see what's on the other side of an object which is directly in front of you if it's large enough to block your field of vision, but you can look from a different angle. If you go further back from something, it looks smaller even though it's the same size, and now you can see some things past that were blocked before. Another vision limitation, which the ancients may well have known about, is the time delay between something happening and seeing it. This comes up in e.g. baseball. (I think they must have known about reaction times, which matter in combat. When you both stand still and swing a practice sword at someone, there is a delay before they start moving to block it. But I don't know if they realized that part of it was a delay in seeing things. They could maybe have thought vision was instantaneous and attributed the delay to the mind deciding to block or to the muscles being slow to act.)

This stuff is a body of knowledge. It has to be passed on culturally, or be inborn, or be reinvented by children. In each case, errors are possible both in transmission (or reinvention) of the knowledge and in the body of knowledge itself.

What is your opinion on people who abuse mechanics in games to be the best at X hobby, sport, gambling, etc? For example I’m one the the best yugioh tcg players in my state, and I often have to create decks that involve “unfair” or “broken” strategists like winning on my first turn by creating a field that is so impossible to break that my opponent would have to forfeit. Or for example if anyone knows super smash bros melee pro player hungryhox, and his controversial playing style where he plays jiggly puff and abuses him by ledge stalling. Are these actions “immoral”? I’m inclined to believe what’s true in your work is true in your hobbies as in knowledge is contextual and interrelated. Perhaps it’s not explicitly the same as committing fraud or manipulation of someone but there is a fuzzy line and I don’t like haveing contradictions in my life. I don’t want to accept a middle of the road thinking. What’s wrong with my thinking?

> What is your opinion on people who abuse mechanics in games to be the best at X hobby, sport, gambling, etc?

I'm not curi but here are some disorganized thoughts. What people consider "abuse" is often fine. I think using game mechanics effectively is fine. What would not be fine is stuff like DDoSing someone during an online game or breaking into someone's hotel room so you can get a look at their deck or something like that.

If a tournament wants to restrict some characters or technique because they are considered too game breaking, or if people want to agree to House rules for a similar reason, that can be okay. People are often bad at judging what's game breaking though. Lots of games (like SSBM) have had extensive discovery of techniques that would not have happened if people had been playing in narrow, self-limiting ways where they caved to every accusation of being abusive or cheesy. It takes some real skill -- the kind of skill that figures out potential game breaking stuff in the first place -- in order to be able to judge issues like whether something is too game breaking.

>For example I’m one the the best yugioh tcg players in my state, and I often have to create decks that involve “unfair” or “broken” strategists like winning on my first turn by creating a field that is so impossible to break that my opponent would have to forfeit.

That sounds fine. Though I'm curious what determines outcomes when first turn wins are possible. Is it a Rock Paper Scissors game of trying to guess what sort of deck the opponent will use, and if you guess right you're good and if you don't you're fucked?

Incidentally I had some mild interest in yugioh years ago, did not realize it was still played.

>Or for example if anyone knows super smash bros melee pro player hungryhox, and his controversial playing style where he plays jiggly puff and abuses him by ledge stalling. Are these actions “immoral”? I’m inclined to believe what’s true in your work is true in your hobbies as in knowledge is contextual and interrelated. Perhaps it’s not explicitly the same as committing fraud or manipulation of someone but there is a fuzzy line and I don’t like haveing contradictions in my life. I don’t want to accept a middle of the road thinking. What’s wrong with my thinking?

Not wanting to accept contradictions is good. Are you an Objectivist? Can you say more about what immorality you think is potentially involved?

#12174 The point of a game is to figure out the most effective strategies and to win. Games are maximization problems. If you think a game is bad, don't play it or modify it. SSBM should try out some ruleset changes.

Asking people to play "nice" gives a disadvantage to the "nicest" people. It's essentially asking each person to make up game rules and follow those. But then different people play by different rules, which is unfair and punishes the "nicer" people who restrict themselves more. And, anyway, people disagree about what kind of gameplay is desirable. Instead, a single clear ruleset for everyone is needed.

> Ways to fund a proper government without taxation could include fees for government enforcement of contracts, voluntary donations, fines for lawbreakers, small fees for “losers” in civil trials, and lotteries.

I'll share criticisms of two of these.

If the government runs a lottery, it's competing with private businesses, no different than if it runs a steel mill or grocery store in order to fund itself. Or else the government has prohibited anyone else from running a lotto, which is even worse. I see no solution to taxation here and I don't see how any free market advocate could want governments to be involved with lottos.

Contract enforcement fees are a similar issue. If you are prohibited from fully enforcing your own contracts (the alternative being anarchy), then the government has a monopoly on a core part of life, and you have no real choice but to pay the government what they demand. That's not *voluntary* government funding. A tax or "fee" on people who interact in contractual ways is like a tax or "fee" for people who earn an income. It's essentially different than a use fee for a small, optional part of life like crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

In October 2018 and March 2019, two Boeing 737 Max 8s crashed, killing 346 people. On April 15, 2019, Vox published a 6-minute video which, aside from some editorializing about capitalism at the end, does a good job explaining what caused the crashes.

Here's my summary of the video:

In 2010, Airbus, Boeing's main competitor, announced an upgrade to the engines on their most popular plane, the A320. The upgraded model, called the A320neo, would be 15% more fuel-efficient while flying essentially the same as the A320.

In response, Boeing rushed to make update their corresponding model, the 737. The result was called the 737 Max 8.

Due to differences in plane height, the 737 Max 8's engine didn't fit neatly under the wing like A320neo's engine. The higher location of the 737 Max 8's engine caused the plane's nose to tilt up during full thrust (e.g., during takeoff).

This uptilt was a significant departure from the flight behavior of the original 737. It would have required expensive pilot retraining. Rather than re-engineer the plane itself, Boeing added software, which they called the MCAS, to *automatically push the nose down if the pilot flew at too high of an angle*. The 737 Max 8s MCAS appears to have engaged at the wrong time, causing the two crashes.

Calling a conclusion "slander" is an attack too. Don't distract from that fact with trivialities. Pay attention!

The funny thing is that while most people don't evade Elliot does so constantly. It's one of his little confessions that he accuses people of that. Rather than engaging with the substance of what other people are saying he plays word games.

It's a tactic mediocre minds use to lie to themselves they're great. "Look this guy doesn't use the word as I do. Therefore he doesn't understand its meaning. What a sad a world! When will I find an intellectual equal I can actually talk to? (Hint: never)"

Many historic examples of this pattern. Take Hegel, Lacan, etc. Except they were good at it and he's hopelessly mediocre.

> The funny thing is that while most people don't evade Elliot does so constantly. It's one of his little confessions that he accuses people of that. Rather than engaging with the substance of what other people are saying he plays word games.

Why don't you give your definition of evasion and a concrete example of Elliot evading, with an explanation as to exactly what the evasion is.

#12191 He's too busy trolling by e.g. denying that calling PUA authors/fans/practitioners/etc *predators* (without knowing much of anything about them) is a slander. He's doing this without even mentioning that they were called predators or discussing whether that claim is insulting, is true, is slanderous, etc.

He's just here to bait people (particularly curi, who he seems to assume is the author of a variety of anonymous posts). He's never even going to tell us what actually triggered him. Did he have a discussion in which he felt bad about a criticism curi said? Who is he and what was said? Blank out. Maybe anonymous said it and he blamed curi.

Is he a Popperian? A parent? An Objectivist? Blank out.

He's resentful of some past conflict which he won't name. Why feed him rational questions/prompts when all he does is spit on them?

#12191 This is another tactic commonly used around here - asking the other side to invest a ridiculous amount of effort - and when they refuse - interpret that as somehow reflecting badly on them. You may not guess it by the virtue of the fact that I comment here - but I actually have a life!

It is rather telling though that questions are always asked in response to such accusations. They are rather difficult to contradict with a straight face.

Japanese runner Yuki Kawauchi raced solo against 103 six-person high-school and club level relay race teams and *won*! This means that the other teams were able to split up their running among 6 different people, while Kawauchi did all the running himself, and still won.

> Kawauchi's final time of 1:01:03 was just 35 seconds off the overall ekiden course record.

Several people claim to be interested or have substantive thoughts about AS, but no one has written anything substantive (expect, sort of, the tangential reply about Popper). I find that awkward. Like all I really have to say is "well, i'm waiting" or "go ahead" or "what are you waiting for?" or "are you going to share any of those thoughts you claimed to have?" All of those things are awkward to say and I don't think they will actually result in any good discussion, and they will result in me getting pressured to explain why certain comments are non-substantive, which will be boring and offensive.

Thoughts on how to proceed? My current plan is to wait more. Also one of you could say something.

> Tsfany: I have learned a lot in the past eight months or so. I am bringing a business, goal-oriented mind-set that I think enhances our ability to focus, define priorities, and then execute on the chosen projects. I’ve learned how complicated it is to promote a philosophical mission, as opposed to a product. It’s a whole different ball game. When you define things in business terms, things are concrete and actionable. But when your mission is educating a culture or changing people’s minds in a very deep way, over time, maybe even on a very long timescale, then the challenge requires a different approach.

#12206 I think he's lying. He didn't learn any major concepts since taking the job, so his "I learned" stories are bullshit. I think he's taking some ideas he had coming in and trying to claim he learned them after coming in. This is stupid. The whole interview is terrible (and softball).

> Rational principles are not mere rules. They are general statements of **fact** that, when combined with a **situation** and a **goal**, yield a **normative guideline**. So, for example, if I have a person on the surface of the Earth, the Newtonian *principle* of gravity tells me that I can put that person into a circular Earth orbit by launching him to a certain height at a certain speed and in a certain direction. If my *goal* is to do this, then I have my basic normative guideline: I *should* launch him at that height, speed and direction.

This example has several problems.

The point is meant to be about principles, but the example is too complicated and distracts from that point. Complications include:

- It’s unclear if the launch involves a rocket or not. No rocket is mentioned but launching without a rocket is unusual.

- If no rocket, the person would die. And they’d die anyway after orbiting for a while unless supplied with oxygen, water and food.

- If no rocket, the person could split into pieces, in which case they wouldn’t end up at a single height or velocity.

- People may wonder if the example, which is somehow related to morality, has something to do with the morality of murder.

- Newtonian mechanics are not an example of a general statement of fact. They are false and have been contradicted by observations. They are an accurate approximation for some calculations.

- Space launches are hard and precise. Most people lack the expertise to know if Newtonian mechanics can be used as a good-enough approximation for this purpose or not.

- People don’t know much about how space launches work, so they may find this hard, intimidating, or confusing. They may not think about the example much. Rocket science is a cliche example of something hard, which people leave to genius-experts and don’t even try to think for themselves about.

Other issues:

- The term for “speed and direction” is “velocity”.

- Launches involve acceleration, not just velocity.

- The paragraph speaks of launching “to” a height but then “at” a height. Those are different things.

- It’s unclear if the height, speed and direction are meant to explain how the launch is done (like at what velocity do you have to throw a person to get them into orbit) or they are talking about the final results of the launch (a person is launched somehow and ends up at a particular velocity).

- My best guess is that launching “at” a speed and “in” a direction refer to the start of the launch (like throwing a ball in a direction, at a speed), but that “to” a height refers to the end result of the launch, not the start of the launch. If so, the parameters (velocity and height) are talking about different things (some are about initial conditions, some about later conditions).

- If it’s meant to be talking about imparting a velocity to a rigid object at Earth’s surface (like throwing a ball), and then the object proceeds into a circular orbit with no further maneuvering, that is not how launches work.

Zero serious interest in AS ch1 analysis, no detailed discussion of anything.

---

Also it's David Kelley faction but they won't admit it.

It looks like most of the discussion is politics. The fairly good news is they appear to be pro Trump. Some of them seem to actually think Trump is doing a pretty good job though, which is bizarre since NO WALL = F GRADE.

> Nearly one-third of the people in Delhi live in illegal colonies where they do not have secure property titles. Illegal colonies violate zoning regulations and master plans. Water connections, sewer lines, electricity, and roads do not function very well because illegal colonies are not even supposed to exist. Some of them are more populous than many American cities.

> Land is not scarce in Delhi, as I learned in one of those days, when a friend drove me around the city. There is enough land for everybody to live in a mansion. Delhi has nearly 20,000 parks and gardens. Large tracts of land remain idle or underutilized, either because the government owns it, or because property titles are weak. Politicians and senior bureaucrats live in mansions with vast, manicured lawns in the core of the city. Some of these political eminentoes farm on valuable urban land while firms and households move to the periphery or satellite cities where real estate prices are lower. So the average commute is long, roads are too congested, and Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in the world.

> Zoning regulations inflict great harm. But it is difficult for Americans to imagine the cost of zoning in Indian cities. Delhi is one of the most crowded cities in the world, and there is great demand for floor space. But real estate developers are not allowed to build tall buildings. In Delhi, for apartment buildings, the regulated Floor Area Ratio (FAR) is usually 2. FAR, an urban planning concept, is the ratio of built-out floor space to the area of the plot.

> This means, in Delhi, developers are not allowed to build more than 2,000 square feet of floor space on a 1,000 square feet plot. If a building stands on the whole plot, this would be a two-storey building.

> To understand the harm this inflicts on the world’s second-most populous city, remember that in Midtown Manhattan, FAR can go up to 15. In Los Angeles, it can get as high as 13, and in Chicago, up to 12. In Hong Kong’s downtown, the highest FAR is 12, in Bahrain it is 17, and in Singapore it can get as high as 25. Not surprisingly, office space in Delhi’s downtown is among the most expensive in the world. It is impossible to profitably redevelop these crumbling buildings in Delhi’s downtown because they are under rent control.

> Delhi is by no means an exception. There are far worse urban planning tragedies among Indian cities. Floor Area Ratios are usually between 1 and 2 in most Indian cities, though some of these cities are more populated than most countries.

> I have never lived in Mumbai, where the average person consumes less floor space than an American prisoner. Mumbai is India’s most prosperous city, but in 2009, the average floor space consumption in Mumbai was merely 48 square feet. There are instances of 10-12 people living in a tiny room. Over half the households have only one room. As early as 1978, a draft of the Department of Justice had accepted that prisons in United States should offer single rooms of at least 80 square feet per man.

> Mumbai is the densest major city in the world, but in Mumbai’s downtown, FAR is 1.33. This is not true of any global city. In 1964, urban planners decided to decongest Mumbai by restricting real estate development in the center. Socialists believed they could decongest Mumbai by restricting real estate development in the best parts of the city.

> Like all such grand plans, this too failed. Zoning regulations did not stop people from migrating to Mumbai. Instead, migrants responded by consuming less and less floor space. They settle down in congested spaces. They build informal settlements in slums. They live in buildings where floors crack, walls crumble, rats eat infants, and clean water is rationed. They occupy rent-controlled buildings where people live so close that petty squabbles lead to riots. It is a joke on planners that Mumbai is now the most crowded city in the world.

> The word 'need' should be eliminated from the vocabulary of political discourse. It is inextricably bound up with a dangerous oversimplification of reality, the idea that there exist certain values infinitely more important than all others, things I need rather than merely want, and that these ‘needs’ can be determined objectively.

[...]

> The idea of need is dangerous because it strikes at the heart of the practical argument for freedom. That argument depends on recognizing that each person is best qualified to choose for himself which among a multitude of possible lives is best for him. If many of those choices involve needs, things of infinite value to one person which can be best determined by someone else, what is the use of freedom? If I disagree with the expert about my needs I make not a value judgment but a mistake.

>If we accept the concept of needs, we must also accept the appropriateness of having decisions concerning those needs made for us by someone else, most likely the government. It is precisely this argument that is behind government subsidies to medicine, present and prospective. Medicine, like food, water, or air, contributes to physical survival. The kind and quantity of medical attention necessary to achieve some particular end—to cure or to prevent a disease, for example—is a question not of individual taste but of expert opinion.

Something about Friedman's argument seems bad. I think maybe he is conflating values being objectively determinable with tyranny but I'm not sure. I don't have the time or attention to analyze this in detail now. Maybe I will later

> A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month.

> A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.

> He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly.

> He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.

> It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says.

> “Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is. CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20 per cent of the global warming in the last few decades”.

> The idea of need is dangerous because it strikes at the heart of the practical argument for freedom. That argument depends on recognizing that each person is best qualified to choose for himself which among a multitude of possible lives is best for him. If many of those choices involve needs, things of infinite value to one person which can be best determined by someone else, what is the use of freedom? If I disagree with the expert about my needs I make not a value judgment but a mistake.

He defines needs as "things of infinite value to one person which can be best determined by someone else". This makes no sense for two reasons.

First, value is not a quantity that can be measured and assigned value. Value is about ranking things not measuring. You value item A over item B if, when given a choice between A and B you would choose A.

Second, the idea that something is of value to Bob that can only be determined by Jim is piffle. A good is only of value to some specific person in some specific context. To say that good A is of value to Bob but only Jim can know it is of value to Bob is to say that Jim values imposing A on Bob. If Bob ought to value A and doesn't, then there is some explanation that would convince Bob to value A. All knowledge is created by variation and selection. There are no magic people who can learn things that it is impossible for other people to learn - that idea is just an anti-rational excuse for imposing ideas on people.

Now, there are items that a person must use if he wants to live. If you stop eating for a long time, then you will die. If you don't have any water for more than a few days you will die. But some people don't value their lives. There are cases in which a person himself to death despite the availability of food. There are also situations in which person A doesn't want to help person B although person B thinks he is owed help by A.

Some people use the term "needs" for items food and drink that people must have to live. They are in favour of using force (taxation, inflation etc.) to provide those "needs". They are also usually in favour of imposing "needs" on people who don't want them, sometimes using psychiatry.

Forcing person A to help person B ignores the possibility that person A could be right about having something better to do. For example, A might write a book that helps lots of people to be more productive so they don't have to beg other people for food and water.

Forcing B to accept "help" he doesn't want ignores the possibility that maybe we don't currently have the knowledge to make his life worthwhile by his lights. So B would just continue to live although he is miserable and wants to die. And he might not contribute anything of value to anyone else. So nobody benefits by B being alive. B should only remain alive as a result of somebody convincing him that living is a good idea.

Using force sometimes also results in the kind of irrationality that leads to people struggling to make ends meet or wanting to die. The idea that people should respond to force by doing what the enforcer wants also leads to being impatient with people who resist. This pattern of broken victims and impatient victimisers is part of how people copy this set of anti-rational memes.

> First, value is not a quantity that can be measured and assigned value. Value is about ranking things not measuring. You value item A over item B if, when given a choice between A and B you would choose A.

Do I value A over $100? Over $101? Over $102?

Ranking something against a succession of numeric quantities, and finding the first number at which the ranking changes, is effectively a way to measure it. And money both comes in a numeric quantity and also is a fairly general purpose type of value. This approach has limited but substantial use and also explains how the appearance of measuring how much people value stuff (often done in money) is compatible with the Austrian econ rankings approach.

> Externalities play an enormously greater role in institutions controlled by voting. If I invest time and energy in discovering which candidate will make the best President, the benefit of that investment, if any, is spread evenly among 200 million people. That is an externality of 99.9999995 percent. Unless it is obvious how I should vote, it is not worth the time and trouble to be a well informed voter except on issues where I get a disproportionately large fraction of the benefit. Situations, in other words, where I am part of a special interest. Consider the CAB again. In order for me, an occasional airline passenger, to do anything about it, I would have to keep track of how every member of the board voted, by whom he was appointed and how my congressmen voted on every bill connected with airline regulation. Having done so, the chance that my vote or any pressure I might try to bring to bear on my congressmen or the President would alter the situation is one in millions. And if I am successful, all I get is a saving of a hundred dollars or so a year in lower air fares. It isn't worth it. For the airline industry the same research, backed by enormously larger resources in votes and money, brings a return of many millions of dollars. For them it is worth it. It is not that they are richer than all airline passengers combined; they are not. But they are concentrated and we are dispersed.

If you were a motivated commentator on some regulatory agency, you could get a reputation as an expert and figure out how to make money doing a podcast/book/lectures/blog/whatever, and maybe you'd actually even get some politicians to listen 👂

> This does not mean that they will never coerce anyone. A rights enforcement agency, like a government, can make a mistake and arrest the wrong man. In exactly the same way, a private citizen can shoot at what he thinks is a prowler and bag the postman instead. In each case, coercion occurs, but it occurs by accident and the coercer is liable for the consequences of his acts. The citizen can be indicted for postman-slaughter and the agency sued for false arrest. Once the facts that make an act coercive are known, it is no longer regarded as having been legitimate.

>This is not true of government actions. In order to sue a policeman for false arrest I must prove not merely that I was innocent but that the policeman had no reason to suspect me. If I am locked up for twenty years and then proven innocent, I have no legal claim against the government for my lost time and mental anguish. It is recognized that the government made a mistake, but the government is allowed to make mistakes and need not, like the rest of us, pay for them. If, knowing that I am innocent, I try to escape arrest and a policeman shoots me down, he is entirely within his rights and I am the criminal. If, to keep him from shooting me, I shoot him in self-defense, I am guilty of murder even after it is proved that I was innocent of the theft and so doing no more than defending myself against the government's (unintentional) coercion.

In a society with some reasonable mechanisms for protecting rights and ensuring due process, it's immoral to shoot at cops in escape attempts. That's true whether there are govt cops or right enforcement agency cops. You should let the system operate and presumably free you if you are innocent

> I have encountered precisely the same error among libertarians who prefer limited government to anarcho-capitalism. Limited government, they say, can guarantee uniform justice based on objective principles. Under anarcho-capitalism, the law varies from place to place and person to person according to the irrational desires and beliefs of the different customers that different protection and arbitration agencies must serve.

>This argument assumes that the limited government is set up by a population most or all of whose members believe in the same just principles of law. Given such a population, anarcho-capitalism will produce that same uniform, just law; there will be no market for any other. But just as capitalism can accommodate to a diversity of individual ends, so anarcho-capitalism can accommodate to a diversity of individual judgments about justice.

>An ideal Objectivist society with a limited government is superior to an anarcho-capitalist society in precisely the same sense that an ideal socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. Socialism does better with perfect people than capitalism does with imperfect people; limited government does better with perfect people than anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no argument against carrying an umbrella.

I'm not convinced AnCap can work well without pretty great people.

It seems to me like to have an anarcho capitalist society work you'd need lots of people with ideas better than current patriotic mainstream Americans, or else people would just reimpose government. Current patriotic mainstream Americans are already very high in terms of people quality. We have lots of people in this country that consider a mixed economy welfare state and the 1st and 2nd Amendment as being WAY too much freedom. And then look at the rest of the world.

> One really essential reason those planes crashed was that *each time the MCAS triggered, it acted like it was the first time*. If it added 1 degree of trim last time, it adds a second this time, a third next time, up to the five degrees that runs the trim all the way to the stops.

> A second reason is that, under the design still on file at the FAA, it could only add a maximum of 0.8 degrees (each time). This was raised to 2.4 degrees after testing, so only two hits could, in principle, put you almost to the stops.

> A third was that the only way to override the MCAS was to turn off power to the motor that worked the trim. But above 400 knots, *the strength needed to dial back the trim with the hand crank was more than actual live pilots have*, especially if it is taking all their strength to pull back on the yoke.

> A fourth was that, with two flight control computers, the pilot could (partly) turn off a misbehaving one, but there is no way to turn on the other one. You have to land first, to switch over, even though the other is doing all the work to be ready to fly the plane.

> A fifth was that it *ignored that pilots were desperately pulling back on the yoke*, which could have been a clue that it was doing the wrong thing.

> A sixth was that, besides comparing redundant sensors, it could have compared what the other flight computer thought it should be doing.

> ... even without checking the left and right AOA sensors against each other (what previous and conventional stick pusher designs have done), all of the problems on the Ethiopian flight could potentially have been avoided by changing

I sympathize with your views on atheism and religion. Atheists, in general, are radicals who throw out lots of traditional knowledge. But most ways of being different are errors. There are more ways to be wrong than right. If you want to be an innovator, you need to put a ton of work into knowing what you're doing, or you'll probably make things worse, not better. Most atheists don't put much effort into their ideas and actually keep lots of common sense and standard views, but also throw some out and make an inconsistent mess.

I think you're mistaken about genetics and IQ, for technical/scientific reasons. See my discussion with an Objectivist about that: https://curi.us/2056-iq

My disagreement about genetic IQ does not mean it's easy for anyone to get more intelligent. That's very hard but is not (I claim) literally impossible. I think the main obstacles are things like dishonesty, evasion, bad culture, anti-rational memes, bad parenting, bad schools, rather than genes. The obstacles are human things which could, in the long run, be improved. We don't have to torture children so much.

Ideas rule the world, as Rand and others have said. That a problem is related to ideas, not genes, is compatible with it being *even harder to change* than genes would be. But it's also different to try to change and address it. I do agree that, in the meantime, you need cultural institutions, government, societal organization or whatever which deals with people as they are. You can't base society today on hopes for what people might be like in the future if educational methods were much better.

> I think there's pretty good reason to assume that the large boardgame-like battle map wasn't actually used by any armed force anywhere until the mid-to-late 19th century.

I'm not convinced it was that late. Quotes from *Playing at the World* by Jon Peterson (emphasis added):

> The seventeenth-century kings of France, notably Louis XIII and the Sun King Louis XIV, possessed opulent armies of silver soldiers as children. [420] William of Orange, later King William III of England, was especially forward-thinking in *using his collection of thousands of toy soldiers to simulate battle plans*.

and

> Even the maps common throughout the eighteenth century were largely cadastral maps, which is to say, maps depicting political divisions, cities, roads and perhaps rivers and coasts rather than any properly-scaled topographic features of the terrain in question. *Accurate topographic maps were a marvelous innovation in the eighteenth century, one that was of intense interest to the various military powers of Europe.* Consider the difficulties of producing topographic maps in the early modern era, of dispatching teams of field surveyors with adequate education and equipment to determine positions and elevations in sufficient detail for the resulting map to serve as a basis for civil or military planning. To give some sense of the magnitude of this undertaking, the first topographic map of France was begun by Cassini in 1670, continued by his son, and subsequently by his grandson, who took it over as a slightly expanded project in 1744 and succeeded in delivering a map (in some 180 sheets) in 1789, just in time for the French Revolution. [355] The appearance of the national French map quickly induced the governments of other European nations to embark on similar projects, such as the British Ordnance Survey, which began a comparable endeavor in 1790.

And regarding the development of war games and the dates for that, here's a sample of what the book has to offer and some earlier dates (italics in original):

> The release of Venturini in 1797, along with the revision of Hellwig in 1803, inspired a wave of *kriegsspiel *publications in Germany, Austria, Italy, France and England over the next twenty years. One author of the era, Georg Emmanuel Opiz, claimed that his father Johann Ferdinand Opiz (1741–1812), a former Jesuit and a well-known writer of his time, had actually invented *kriegsspiel* sometime around 1760, though the Opiz game did not see print until 1806, when *kriegsspiel *deriving from Hellwig already enjoyed widespread acclaim. [358] By 1804, Hellwig appeared in French, no doubt prompting le Comte de Firmas-Périés to produce his very Hellwig-inspired *Le jeu de Stratégie, ou les éches militaires* in 1808. In Italy, Francesco Giacometti circulated his *Nuovo Giuoco di Scacchi, ossia il Giuoco della Guerra* first in an Italian edition in 1793, and then, given certain changes in the political situation of Italy, in a French-language edition of 1801, *Nouveau jeu des éches ou jeu de la Guerre*. Major J. J. von Glöden in 1817 issued a German-language *kriegsspiel*, as did Johann Gottlieb Perkuhn that same year. Some openly acknowledged their debt to Hellwig, like the *Zusätze zu den Regeln des Hellwigschen Kriegsspiel und Veränderung dieser Regeln *(1818). No less than fifteen European authors had weighed in on wargaming before the first quarter of the nineteenth century had passed.

Also particularly relevant are the sections *3.1.1 Games of War Before 1780* and *3.1.2 The Brunswick Gamers (1780–1811)*.

#12302 The historian with over 3000 upvotes, who is a moderator, replied. He wasn't hostile/mad (at least not visibly), but he didn't learn and he moved the goalposts dishonestly. There are no Paths Forward there.

Why would you ask "Why?" if you don't want to know and would prefer to delete it than think about it? You seem to be asking people to waste their time and misleading them about your interest in discussion.

> Why would you ask "Why?" if you don't want to know and would prefer to delete it than think about it? You seem to be asking people to waste their time and misleading them about your interest in discussion.

If the tweet is bad then it shouldn't exist cuz it promotes misconceptions. I asked if it was bad so I could know if it was actually bad.

#12313 You shouldn't tweet things that you wouldn't want to think about and analyze errors in. Doing that is a lie: it's pretending to post something in a rational when, when you actually aren't.

You shouldn't ask people to help you understand things you aren't really interested in. Another lie.

You shouldn't destroy permalinks. If you do, you absolutely should have posted a copy here so the discussion should still be followed. And it's better to use retractions so people can see the error correction (including people who already read the mistaken tweet).

If you wouldn't want to post mortem an error in something, you shouldn't say it at all. Or at the very least, should keep it separate from FI (or should label it at the start as something you would not post mortem an error in, so that people know to not read it).

> #12313 You shouldn't tweet things that you wouldn't want to think about and analyze errors in. Doing that is a lie: it's pretending to post something in a rational when, when you actually aren't.

By that definition and given an open ended conception of debate, basically every tweet on Twitter that's about an intellectual topic is a lie, isn't it?

I'm not trying to debate the definition of lie here, just checking my understanding

> You shouldn't ask people to help you understand things you aren't really interested in. Another lie.

I don't concede that I did this. We can table this for now or you can say more if you care to. I maintain that I had a genuine interest in understanding what was wrong about the tweet to a low standard of understanding quality - enough to make a call about whether I should delete it or not.

> You shouldn't destroy permalinks. If you do, you absolutely should have posted a copy here so the discussion should still be followed. And it's better to use retractions so people can see the error correction (including people who already read the mistaken tweet).

> If you wouldn't want to post mortem an error in something, you shouldn't say it at all.

I say and tweet more than I think I can post Mortem. I'd basically not tweet and be a mute (online) if I followed this advice, until I got way better at not making mistakes anyways. What am I missing? Or would not tweeting and saying way less stuff be a good idea?

> By that definition and given an open ended conception of debate, basically every tweet on Twitter that's about an intellectual topic is a lie, isn't it?

Yes. (Semi-intellectual) people everywhere ~constantly lie that they have Paths Forward, when they don't.

> I don't concede that I did this. We can table this for now or you can say more if you care to. I maintain that I had a genuine interest in understanding what was wrong about the tweet to a low standard of understanding quality - enough to make a call about whether I should delete it or not.

You didn't say that.

> I say and tweet more than I think I can post Mortem. I'd basically not tweet and be a mute (online) if I followed this advice, until I got way better at not making mistakes anyways. What am I missing? Or would not tweeting and saying way less stuff be a good idea?

Stop overreaching. Do stuff where your error rate is lower so that you can keep up with the errors you create.

You posted lecturey tweet about advanced stuff where you don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't learning oriented. It was a bad activity.

> “Classrooms and campuses provide physical control over students for nearly two decades of their lives. That control was initially used for simple dogmatic preaching. Then it escalated to cult behavior with classroom role-playing rituals encouraging mass expressions of love and hate, transformations of sexual and gender identity, detachment from friends and family, and violent displays of pain and rage.

> The modern American identity politics campus looks a whole lot like Jonestown or a Hitler Youth rally.

> Exploiting sexuality, triggering guilt and shame in children, to transform their identity was usually the work of the lowest savage tribes and the vilest cults. It’s now the American education system.

> The techniques aren’t new. They’re as evil and old as time itself.

> Like every cult, the modern campus claims to serve an educational purpose, helping students find meaning and purpose, but insisting that they must first be cured of the subconscious evils such as white privilege and toxic masculinity that are holding them back through a process that deconstructs their barriers, encourages confession, expressions of trauma, shame and guilt, to create new identities.

> This isn’t education. It’s not even dogmatic lecturing. It’s the same basic set of techniques used by any major cult in the country. Once colleges began trying to cure their students of subconscious evils at closed sessions, under the guidance of unlicensed therapists associated with a movement, there was no longer any difference between them and that of any cult, except billions in taxpayer dollars.

> The sessions at which white privilege or toxic masculinity can be cured, or at which students are put in touch with the trauma of their oppression as minorities, duplicate cult indoctrination in every regard.”

>> By that definition and given an open ended conception of debate, basically every tweet on Twitter that's about an intellectual topic is a lie, isn't it?

> Yes. (Semi-intellectual) people everywhere ~constantly lie that they have Paths Forward, when they don't.

OK thanks for the clarity on that point.

>> I don't concede that I did this. We can table this for now or you can say more if you care to. I maintain that I had a genuine interest in understanding what was wrong about the tweet to a low standard of understanding quality - enough to make a call about whether I should delete it or not.

> You didn't say that.

OK. I concede I should have stated if my goal was something less than having an open-ended discussion, given the context of where I was posting.

I also note that I might be rationalizing about having had this goal of "genuine interest in understanding what was wrong about the tweet to a low standard of understanding quality." I don't think I was rationalizing, but I rationalize a lot, so I note that it is possible.

>> I say and tweet more than I think I can post Mortem. I'd basically not tweet and be a mute (online) if I followed this advice, until I got way better at not making mistakes anyways. What am I missing? Or would not tweeting and saying way less stuff be a good idea?

> Stop overreaching. Do stuff where your error rate is lower so that you can keep up with the errors you create.

> You posted lecturey tweet about advanced stuff where you don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't learning oriented. It was a bad activity.

It sounds like you don't think being silent is necessary, just more care in picking what topics to talk about (topics that are not overreaching). I think that overall sounds okay but I have a specific problem (below).

Where you say "advanced stuff where you don't know what you're talking about," is the "advanced stuff" economics? I didn't think I was totally ignorant of economics. But apparently I don't know what I'm talking about on the subject, which sounds like I'm totally ignorant. So you're saying I shouldn't talk about economics? Or only certain topics within that field? or what?

> Where you say "advanced stuff where you don't know what you're talking about," is the "advanced stuff" economics?

You were trying to use a Mises argument about trade and war, which you have not taken steps to test your understanding of or practice using. You skipped the appropriate learning and error correction steps and went straight to lecturing.

You ought to be wary of lecturing about anything. Among other things, you don't have a clear understanding of the boundaries of your knowledge. You ought to focus more on learning. Instead of viewing it as what you shouldn't talk about, you should focus more on what you *should* talk about, and why, and be so enthusiastic you don't have spare time to waste your time.

> This article attacks a straw man. Being falsifiable is necessary but it is not sufficient to be considered a scientific hypothesis. Such a hypothesis also, and more importantly, has to provide a better explanation of some phenomenon than the current best theory. Experimental evidence is only brought to bear to decide among plausible alternative theories after the vast majority of candidate theories have been eliminated for not providing good explanations.

> It's easy to see that this must be true because we can only ever have a finite amount of data, and that will always be consistent with an infinite number of falsifiable theories (c.f. Russell's teapot). So data cannot possibly help us choose from among those.

#12331 Saying a theory has to be better than any prior theory to qualify as "scientific" is ridiculous. That makes more sense as a criterion for accepting the theory as the best available, not for considering it part of science.

I think he's getting this from DD (without credit), but he doesn't understand it much.

DD could have written in BoI "After reading this book, you will have misunderstood most of it. Everyone does. Because error is inevitable and this is too far away from your prior knowledge to expect to understand using only the power of your own personal error correction. You need external criticism too, especially from people who already understand this stuff. Join our discussion forum at [link]."

DD didn't want to do anything like that. Nothing about inviting people to learn more, and no link to anything online.

He's also posting on a moderated, leftist, anti-semitic forum where I won't reply.

Various worrying things in comments there, in the blog post, and in comments on the blog post. Lots of people have been screwed, not just one.

I just exported a backup of the FI mailing list (they make it easy to download a list of subscribers). Will do that periodically (way easier than switching, not much downside to delaying switching until an actual problem since I can move people over).

> You should come to my workplace and tell this to actual scientists, who seem to have no trouble hypothesizing things they are unable to falsify, who pick up methods because "other people are doing this", not because of some underlying epistemological criterion, and whose epistemologically broken hypotheses have no trouble getting published in top-flight journals.

> I also object to you saying "better explanation" without defining what that is. What makes something "better"? It's more intellectually satisfying? It feels "right"? It has a lower p-value? The ultimate subjectivity of this criterion, which is really at the root of all scientific endeavor, is why philosophy of science remains so difficult to pin down.

In the end what makes up scientific knowledge is that a bunch of people we call "scientists" approve of it, and pass it on in their writing and speech. Philosophers of science are welcome to come up with theories about how science operates, but I suggest they might benefit from some anthropological approaches, because scientists are sure not reading and applying their philosophy books.

> I would be happy to do that if your workplace is not too far away and you want to invite me to speak.

>> I also object to you saying "better explanation" without defining what that is. What makes something "better"?

> The short version of the answer to that is: a superior explanation is one that explains more phenomena with fewer ad hoc assumptions and free parameters. (There are other characteristics of good explanations. For example, they are hard to change without losing their explanatory power. The classic example of a bad explanation that runs afoul of this criterion is Ptolemaic epicycles: why circles? Why not some other shape? It turns out that any shape can actually be used to construct Ptolemaic epicycles because what Ptolemy actually discovered was Fourier analysis, though he didn't realize it at the time.)

> The short version of the answer to that is: a superior explanation is one that explains more phenomena with fewer ad hoc assumptions and free parameters.

This is an incorrect holdover from non-CR epistemology. Popper fixed it a little and DD more (lisper's version is worse than theirs, see also DD's criticism of Occam's Razor in BoI). But I fixed it much more:

The short answer is that we shouldn't judge explanations as "better" (by degree) as a way of choosing which ones to accept. Instead, we must consider: do we have a non-refuted explanation of why the theory fails to solve the problem it's supposed to solve?

Instead of various criteria to raise or lower the score of an idea, you must look at what problem it's supposed to solve and whether you can figure out any decisive reason that *it will not work* or, more precisely, *should not be expected to work*. ( Thinking about *expectation* of it working is important with vague theories or theories that lack reasoning about how and why they will work, but claim "maybe" they will work. Expectation of it working is also the thing you refute when you point out why the plan for solving the problem that the theory offers has some relevant error, so the reason for expecting it to work is gone, but you don't actually analyze whether it might work for some other unknown reason (of which there are infinity).

(You may want to quote some of this in your email, or say some of it your own way.)

> Furthermore, MWI is often presented in a caricatured way that is actually false. The popular view of MWI is one of discrete universes that "split" when "measurements" are made, i.e. at any point in time there exists some definite finite integral number of universes. That's not how it works. DD obviously knows this, but you'd be hard pressed to find this idea debunked in any of his non-technical writings.

If you mean that DD should blog more, I agree. But below is an example of DD rejecting the splitting idea in non-technical writing. I still don't see what is "disingenuous" about his position that MWI is what you get when you take QM math seriously, and I don't know why you didn't respond to the physics issue I also addressed, which I thought was more important.

> Conservation laws are actually very important to physics. See, for example, the Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 1).

For what it's worth, the conservation laws, in the senses in which they are fundamental to physics, wouldn't be violated in the 'splitting universes' version of the Everett interpretation.

There are several ways of expressing the law of the conservation of energy. One of them is: it is impossible to build a perpetual motion machine of the first kind (a device that delivers net work to its environment and returns to its original state). Evidently splitting universes would not provide any means of building such a machine. Another is that the rate of flow of energy out through any closed surface in space is equal to minus the rate of change of the total energy in the volume enclosed by that space. Again, this would still be true if universes split.

The version of the conservation laws that *is* violated by splitting universes is something like: 'the sum of the energies of all physical systems in existence is constant'. But this only applies to systems whose energies are additive. Who told us that energies are additive across universes when they split? In fact, the other two versions of the conservation law tell us that they are not. (Or rather, would not be, if universes did split in the manner envisaged in that version of the Everett interpretation.)

The fundamental problem in the 'splitting universes' version is simply that there is no feature of the quantum-mechanical description of physical systems that corresponds to the moment, or the process, of splitting.

> All reasoning has to start from assumptions. Assumptions by definition can't be proven or disproven. So how can we evaluate our core assumptions? If we try to use reason, that reasoning must itself be based on some assumptions like, "Reason is the best way to evaluate assumptions." But since that is an assumption, how can we evaluate it without getting into a infinite regression?

Why doesn't your post take into consideration the Critical Rationalist position on this?

I will still try some of this author's other books. *Noble Vision* does a good job of copying a bunch of stuff from AS/FH. It's not better, it doesn't innovate, in fact it's considerably worse, but even 20% as good as AS or FH is still a *lot*, I liked it.

*Noble Vision* is much simpler than FH or AS and more repetitive. This may make it better for beginners in some ways. So it does have an advantage over Rand, even though those things were disadvantages for me. So besides FH/AS fans, I'd also recommend it to people who want to learn about Oism but didn't like FH/AS and want something easier to try and think fiction will work better for them than non-fiction.

The other advantage *Noble Vision* has over FH/AS is various details about socialized medicine. It's about a doctor in a state which is leading the country in government control over healthcare and giving everyone free healthcare. So if that topic interests you, that's another reason to read it.

#12406 As far as I can tell, everyone has read what I said as "we should implement 0-0-2 role lock". That's it. That is what they heard. Any nuance beyond that is lost on them. The fact that I didn't say that is also lost on them.

#12408 I read strong claims + hedge as referring to the claimer's confidence and to the state of reality separately. I decipher which is which by which part of the sentence the claim or hedge is referencing.

So for example:

"i have a feeling they definitely want X"

means something quite different from:

"i'm totally sure they may want X"

I read "i have a feeling they definitely want X" to mean:

- The claimer thinks an important fact to know is if it's true that they (others) definitely want X. (if it's true that the others are totally sure about wanting X) AND

- The claimer has an opinion he's not sure about concerning the fact, which is that it's true.

Whereas "i'm totally sure they may want X" means:

- The claimer thinks an important fact to know is if it's true that they (others) may want X. (if it's true that the others haven't ruled out wanting X) AND

- The claimer has an opinion he's confident in concerning the fact, which is that it's true.

Maybe I give people too much credit. I can see how either wording could mean the same thing coming from someone thinking vaguely and writing to match.

#12409 I don't think it's logical because both the hedge and the strong word *come from the same single piece of info*. And neither one is worded in a logical way. She has a feeling (because of the data)? Ridiculous. And it'd make more sense (not great, but i'd understand it more) to interpret a 9-to-1 ratio as indicating preference *strength* (degree) not decisiveness.

#12358 I read Fugitive From Asteron and liked it more than *A Dream of Daring*. It also has much less copied from Rand than *Noble Vision*, but I liked the plot more (sci fi instead of slave south). It features a communist dystopia and then the guy goes to a free society and sees lots of differences (minor spoiler which i figured isn't a big deal because it's also hinted at by the title which lets you know the protagonist – who is living on Astereon, a really awful planet – will soon be a fugitive). it's ok. not a high priority to read but it has some Objectivist and liberal values, and i don't know where to find better sci fi that i haven't already read. Gen LaGreca isn't great at all as a writer but is acceptable, and throwing in some good ideas – plus leaving out a ton of the usual bad ideas – is nice. it's kinda hard to find fiction books without some *awful* values in some parts, especially if they are trying to talk about ideas. also the writing itself is better than *Noble Vision* (at least for me) because it's less repetitive and is more willing to trust the reader to remember some things.

>The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement (simplified Chinese: ????; traditional Chinese: ????; pinyin: B?ihu? Qífàng), was a period in 1956 in the People's Republic of China[1] during which the Communist Party of China (CPC) encouraged its citizens to express openly their opinions of the communist regime. Differing views and solutions to national policy were encouraged based on the famous expression by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong: "The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science".[2][3] The movement was in part a response to the demoralization of intellectuals, who felt estranged from the Communist Party.[4]

>After this brief period of liberalization, Mao used this to oppress those who challenged the communist regime by using force. The crackdown continued through 1957–1959 as an Anti-Rightist Campaign against those who were critical of the regime and its ideology. Those targeted were publicly criticized and condemned to prison labor camps.[5] The ideological crackdown following the campaign's failure re-imposed Maoist orthodoxy in public expression, and catalyzed the Anti-Rightist Movement. Some believe the Hundred Flowers Campaign was in fact an effort by Mao to identify, persecute, and silence critics of the regime.

Apollo 11 (2019) is a great documentary about Apollo 11. The mission itself was carried out in July 1969. It accomplished JFK's proposed goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the 1960s.

> As far as I was able to find out, the guests–apart from government officials and foreign dignitaries–were mainly scientists, industrialists and a few intellectuals who had been selected to represent the American people and culture on this occasion. If this was the standard of selection, I am happy and proud that I was one of these guests.

I found the film inspiring and saddening. On the one hand, the film gives a glimpse of the people who possessed the virtues required to carry out such a mission. In the essay linked above, Rand wrote:

> The most inspiring aspect of Apollo 11's flight was that it made such abstractions as rationality, knowledge, science perceivable in direct, immediate experience.

> [...]

> No one chose a type of fuel for Apollo 11 because he "felt like it," or ignored the results of a test because he "didn't feel like it," or programmed a computer with a jumble of random, irrelevant nonsense he "didn't know why." No one made a decision affecting the spacecraft, by hunch, by whim, or by sudden, inexplicable "intuition."

On the other hand, the America of that era is gone. Back then, America had not yet been inundated with immigrants who hate America. The people who worked on Apollo were hired not for their demographics but for their competence and for their ability to work together as a team. The Apollo 8 astronauts even broadcasted a bible reading during Christmas as the Earth came into view while they orbited the moon.

In November 1969, at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, Ayn Rand gave a talk titled "Apollo and Dionysus". The talk, which references her essay linked above, contrasts Apollo 11 with the festival at Woodstock that took place around the same time. The Ayn Rand institute has published a free transcript and audio recording of the talk.

2. There was a missing ellipsis in a quote from Ayn Rand. The quote (which comes from p. 718 of the Sep 1969 issue of *The Objectivist* linked above) should have been:

> No one chose a type of fuel for Apollo 11 because he "felt like it," or ignored the results of a test because he "didn't feel like it," or programmed a computer with a jumble of random, irrelevant nonsense he "didn't know why." […] No one made a decision affecting the spacecraft, by hunch, by whim, or by sudden, inexplicable "intuition."

> Every sensible man realizes that the perfection of a mechanical instrument depends to some extent upon the perfection of the tools with which it is made. No carpenter would expect a perfectly smooth board after using a dented or chipped plane. No gasolene engine manufacturer would expect to produce a good motor unless he had the best lathes obtainable to help him turn out his product. No watchmaker would expect to construct a perfectly accurate timepiece unless he had the most delicate and accurate tools to turn out the cogs and screws. Before any specialist produces an instrument he thinks of the tools with which he is to produce it. But men reflect continually on the most complex problems—problems of vital importance to them—and expect to obtain satisfactory solutions, without once giving a thought to the manner in which they go about obtaining those solutions; without a thought to their own mind, the tool which produces those solutions. Surely this deserves at least some systematic consideration.

>Most people, when confronted with a problem, immediately acquire an inordinate desire to “read-up” on it. When they get stuck mentally, the first thing such people do is to run to a book. Confess it, have you not often been in a waiting room or a Pullman, noticed people all about you reading, and finding yourself without any reading matter, have you not wished that you had some?—something to “occupy your mind”? And did it ever occur to you that you had within you the power to occupy your mind, and do it more profitably than all those assiduous readers? Briefly, did it ever occur to you to think?

> I beg no one to get frightened. Science does not necessarily mean test tubes and telescopes. I mean science in its broadest sense; and in this sense it means nothing more than organized knowledge. If we are to find rules and methods of procedure, these methods must come from somewhere—must be based on certain principles—and these principles can come only from close, systematic investigation.

> MOST of us, at those rare intervals when we think at all, do so in a slipshod sort of way. If we come across a mental difficulty we try to get rid of it in almost any kind of hit or miss manner. Even those few of us who think occasionally for the mere sake of thinking, generally do so without regard for method—indeed, are often unconscious that method could be applied to our thought. But what is meant by method? I may best explain by an example.

> From somewhere or other, a man gets hold of the idea that the proper subjects are not being taught in our schools and colleges. He asks himself what the proper subjects would be. He considers how useless his knowledge of Greek and Latin has been. He decides that these two subjects should be eliminated. Then he thinks how he would have been helped in business by a knowledge of bookkeeping, and he concludes that this subject deserves a place in the curriculum. He has recently received a letter from a college friend containing some errors in spelling. He is convinced that this branch of knowledge is being left in undeserved neglect. Or he is impressed by the spread of unsound theories of money among the poorer classes, and he believes that everybody should receive a thorough course in economics and finance. And so he rambles on, now on this subject, now on that.

> Compare this haphazard, aimless thinking with that of the man of method. This man is confronted with the same general situation as our first thinker, but he makes his problem a different one. He first asks himself what end he has in view. He discovers that he is primarily trying to find out not so much—what subjects should be taught in the schools? as—what knowledge is of most worth? He puts the problem definitely before himself in this latter form. He then sees that the problem—what knowledge is of most worth?, implies that what is desired is not to find what subjects are of worth and what are not, but what is the relative value of subjects. His next step, obviously, is to discover a standard by which the relative value of subjects can be determined; and this, let us say, he finds in the help a knowledge of these subjects gives to complete living. Having decided this, he next classifies in the order of their importance the activities which constitute human life, and follows this by classifying subjects as they prepare for these activities.1

> Needless to say, the results obtained by this thinker will be infinitely more satisfactory than those arrived at by his unsystematic brother. Method, then, is essential.

> Before starting to solve a question—while deciding, for instance, on the validity of some nice distinction in logic—we should ask ourselves, “What practical difference will it make if I hold one opinion or the other? How will my belief influence my action?”—(using the word “action” in its broadest sense). This may often lead our line of inquiry into more fruitful channels, keep us from making fine but needless distinctions, help us to word our question more relevantly, and lead us to make distinctions where we really need them.

Note the similarity to some Popper stuff here regarding the point about observing. This book was published when Popper was 14, so Hazlitt didn't get it from Popper

> Nowhere is the evolutionary method more strikingly seen than in biology. Since Darwin’s great theory was promulgated the science has gone forward by leaps and bounds. We have derived untold benefit from a comparison of man and animals in the light of this hypothesis; even study of the development of individual man has been aided. The discovery of the fact of evolution constituted an incalculable advance, but the method for study which it furnished was of even greater importance.

> I have spoken of the comparison of man and animals “in the light of this (evolutionary) hypothesis.” This brings us to a point which must be kept in mind in practically all observation. We are often exhorted to “observe.” Presumably we are to do this “on general principles.” Such advice is about as foolish as asking us to think on general principles. Imagine for the moment what would happen if you started right now to “observe” as much as you could. You might begin with this book and notice the size of the type, the amount of margin, the quality of the paper, the dimensions of the page, the number of pages. But you have by no means exhausted the number of properties possessed by this book. You must observe that it is also combustible, that it is destructible, that it is machine made, that it is American printed, that it is such and such a price, that it weighs so many ounces, that it is flat, that it is rectangular, that its thickness is so much....

> The absurdity is obvious. If we started out merely to observe, with no definite purpose in mind, we could keep it up forever. And get nowhere. Nine out of every ten observations would never be put to use. We would be sinfully wasting our time. To observe most profitably, just as to think most profitably, we must have a definite purpose. This purpose must be to test the truth of a supposition.

> In fact, it is only by deep reflection on a subject that we come to realize most of the problems involved. You walk along the road with your friend the botanist and he stops to pick what looks to you to be a common wild flower. “Hm,” he muses, “I wonder how that got in this part of the country?” Now that is no problem to you, simply because you do not happen to know why that particular flower should not be there—and what men do not know about they take for granted. Knowledge furnishes problems, and the discovery of problems itself constitutes an intellectual advance.

> Whenever you are thrashing out a subject, write down every problem, difficulty and objection that occurs to you. When you get what you consider a satisfactory solution, see whether or not it answers all of them.

> The average man (that mythical creature!) when he has just been confronted with a problem, may wrestle with it with all the vigor of a great thinker. But as he sees difficulties multiplying about him, he gradually becomes more and more discouraged. Finally he throws up the problem in disgust, contenting himself with the reflection that it cannot be solved, or that it will take somebody who knows more than he to solve it.

> A real thinker, however, if confronted with the same problem, will look for a solution from every possible viewpoint. But failing an answer he will not give up. Instead he will let the subject drop for a while, say a couple of weeks or perhaps longer, and then refer to it again. This time he will find that certain obscurities have become a little clearer; that certain questions have been answered. He will again attack his puzzle with energy. And if he does not obtain a complete solution he will once more put it aside, returning to it after another interval, until finally a satisfactory solution presents itself.

> You may fail to see any difference between thinking for two hours separated by two weeks, and thinking for two consecutive hours. As an experiment, then, the next time you come across a puzzle which you fail to solve at first tilt, write down all the unsatisfactory solutions suggested, and all the questions, difficulties and objections met with. You may leave this for a few weeks. When you return to it a few of the difficulties will look less formidable, and some of the questions will have practically answered themselves. (Of course some of the difficulties may look more formidable, and a few new questions may have arisen.) If a solution is not found at the second attempt, the problem may again be sent to your mental waiting room. But if it is only of reasonable difficulty a solution is bound, soon or late, to be discovered.

>It is important that we be unprejudiced. It is even more important that our views be definite. And if our definite views are wrong?... But the words of Thomas Huxley on this subject cannot be improved:

>“A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age—I mean Francis Bacon—said that truth came out of error much more rapidly than it came out of confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that saying. Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that sets you all straight again.”5

> One word more on this. There is a type of individual, most often met with among writers, who fears to make a statement of his thought definite, because he has a faint suspicion that it may be wrong. He wishes to allow himself plenty of loopholes to slip out of an intellectual position in case any one should attack it. Hence he never says outright, “Such and such is the case.” Instead, his talk or writing is guarded on all sides by such expressions as “It is probable that,” “it is possible that,” “the facts seem to indicate that”; or “such and such is perhaps the case.” Not satisfied with this he makes his statement less positive by preceding it with an “I believe,” or worse yet, with an “I am inclined to believe.”

> This is often done under the impression that it is something noble, that it signifies broadmindedness, lack of dogmatism, and modesty. It may. If it does, so much the worse for broadmindedness, lack of dogmatism, and modesty. Never yield to the temptation to word your thoughts in this manner. If you truly and firmly believe that “such and such is the case” say “ such and such is the case”; not “it is possible that such and such is the case,” or “such and such is perhaps the case,” or “it is my belief that such and such is the case.” People will assume that it is your belief and not somebody else’s.

> While no complaint can be made of lack of quantity in what has been written on reading, most of it has not taken up the subject from the proper standpoint; still less has dealt with it in the right manner. There has been counsel galore urging people to read; and recently there has been a great deal of advice on what to read. But comparatively very little has been said on how to read. At one time reading was regarded an untainted virtue, later it was seen that it did us no good unless we read good books, and now there is a dawning consciousness that even if we read good books they will benefit us little unless we read them in the right way.

> But even where this consciousness has been felt, little attempt has been made to solve the problem systematically. Leisurely discourses, pretty aphorisms, and dogmatic rules have been the forms in which the question has been dealt with. Such conflicting adages as “A good book should be read over and over again”; and “The art of reading is the art of skipping,” are not very serviceable. The necessity of some sort of orderly treatment is evident.

> Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere.

I think there's something to be said for hedging when you're not sure that an un-hedged version of what you're saying would be correct. Repeatedly being both overconfident and wrong (in light of existing knowledge, not in light of what people discover in the future) is a problem.

> The very fact that you want to study a subject implies that the phenomena with which it deals are not clear to you. You desire to study economics, for instance, because you feel that you do not understand everything you should about the production, distribution and consumption of wealth. In other words, something about these phenomena puzzles you—you have some unsolved problems. Very well. These problems are your materials. Try to solve them.

> “But how can I solve them when I know nothing of economics?”

> Kindly consider what a science is. A science is nothing more than the organized solution of a number of related problems. These problems and their answers have been changed and added to the ages through. But when the science first started there was no literature on it. It originated from the attempts of men to solve those problems which spontaneously occurred to them. Before they started thinking these men knew nothing of the science. The men who came after them availed themselves of the thoughts of those before, and added to these. The whole process has been one of thought added to thought. Yet, in spite of this, people still cling to the belief, even if they do not openly avow it, that we never can make any headway by thinking, but that in order to be educated, or cultured, or to have any knowledge, we must be reading, reading, reading.3

> I almost blush for this elaborate defense. Everybody will admit the necessity for thinking —in the abstract. But how do we regard it in the concrete? When we see a man reading a good book, we think of him as educating himself. When we perceive a man without a book, even though we may happen to know that he is engaged in reflection, we do not look upon him as educating himself, though we may regard him as intelligent. In short, our habitual idea of thought is that it is a process of reviewing what we already know, but not of adding anything to our knowledge. Of course no one would openly avow this opinion, but it is the common acting belief none the less. The objections to thought are inarticulate and half-conscious. I am trying to make them articulate in order to answer them.

> In addition to reading, young Henry also devoted some time every day to writing.

Sounds like a wise plan.

> He set out to write a book on a very ambitious subject, *Thinking as a Science*, and before many months had passed, it was finished.

Not bad for just a few months!

> He submitted the book to five publishers, received five rejections, and got discouraged. Then a friend urged him to send it out once more. He did -- and this time it was accepted by the well-known firm of E. P. Dutton & Co. In 1916, at the age of 22, Henry Hazlitt became a published author.

> From age 20, [Hazlitt] wrote something almost every day -- news items, editorials, reviews, articles, columns. By his 70th birthday, he figured he must have written "in total some 10,000 editorials, articles, and columns; some 10,000,000 words! And in print! The verbal equivalent of about 150 average-length books."

> Hazlitt's review, featured on page one of *The [New York] Times*' Book Review Section (September 24, 1944), compared Hayek's *The Road to Serfdom* to John Stuart Mill's *On Liberty*. Hazlitt described it as "one of the most important books of our generation".

> So with reading. When we peruse a book in the usual casual way we do not master it. And when we read a book on the same subject immediately after it, the different viewpoint is liable to cause bewilderment and make us worse off than before the second book was started. We do not like to devote a lot of time to one book, but would rather run through several books in the same time, believing that we thereby gain more ideas. We are just as mistaken as a beginner in swimming who would attempt to learn several strokes before having mastered one well enough to keep afloat.

> While I believe all the foregoing suggestions are judicious and necessary, I am willing to admit that their wisdom may reasonably be doubted. But there is one practice about which there can be no controversy—that of making sure you thoroughly understand every idea of an author. While most people will not verbally contradict this advice, their actual practice may be a continual contradiction of it. They will be in such haste to finish a book that they will not stop to make sure they really understand the more difficult or obscure passages. Just what they hope to gain it is difficult to say. If they think it is wasting time to try to understand every idea, it is surely a greater waste of time to read an idea without understanding it. To be sure, the difficulty of understanding may be the fault of the author. It may be due to his involved and muddled way of expressing himself. It may be the vagueness of the idea itself. But if anything this is all the greater reason why you should attempt to understand it. It is the only way you can find whether or not the author himself really knew what he was talking about. To understand thoroughly the thought of another does not necessarily mean to sympathize with it; it does not mean to ask how that other came by it. It means merely to substitute as far as possible concrete mental images for the words he uses, and analyze those images to discover to what extent they agree with facts.

> Another way of reading a book is what I may call the anticipating method. Whenever a writer has started to explain something, or whenever you see that he is about to, stop reading and try to think out the explanation for yourself. Sometimes such thinking will anticipate only a paragraph, at other times an entire chapter. School and college text-books, and in fact formal text-books generally, often contain lists of questions at the end of the chapters. Where you find these, read them before you read the chapter, and where possible try to answer them by your own thinking. This practice will make you understand an explanation much more easily. If your thinking agrees with the author’s explanation it will give you self-confidence. It will make you realize whether or not you understand an explanation. If you were not able to think the thing out for yourself you will appreciate the author’s explanation. If your thinking disagrees with that of the author you will have an opportunity to correct him— or be corrected. In either case your opinion will rest on firmer grounds. Not least of all you will be getting practice in self-thinking.

Mises, in *Liberalism* ("epigone" means "a less distinguished follower or imitator of someone, especially an artist or philosopher"):

> John Stuart Mill is an epigone of classical liberalism and, especially in his later years, under the influence of his wife, full of feeble compromises. He slips slowly into socialism and is the originator of the thoughtless confounding of liberal and socialist ideas that led to the decline of English liberalism and to the undermining of the living standards of the English people. Nevertheless—or perhaps precisely because of this—one must become acquainted with Mill's principal writings:

> Principles of Political Economy (1848)

> On Liberty (1859)

> Utilitarianism. (1862)

> Without a thorough study of Mill it is impossible to understand the events of the last two generations. For Mill is the great advocate of socialism. All the arguments that could be advanced in favor of socialism are elaborated by him with loving care. In comparison with Mill all other socialist writers—even Marx, Engels, and Lassalle—are scarcely of any importance.

Hazlitt ain't Mises or Rand. And even Mises didn't say negative things about Hayek (afaik), only Rand did that (and later Objectivists like Reisman and I).

> Practice being the thing needful, it is essential that we put aside a certain amount of time for it. Unless you lay out a definite program, unless you put aside, say, one-half hour every day, for pure downright independent thinking, you will probably neglect to practice at all. One-half hour out of every twenty-four seems little enough. You may think you can fit it in with no trouble. But no matter how shamelessly you have been putting in your time, you have been doing something with it. In order to get in your thirty minutes of thinking, you will have to put aside something which has been habitually taking up a half hour of your day. You cannot expect simply to add thinking to your other activities. Some other activity must be cut down or cut out.1

> You may think me quite lenient in advising only one-half hour a day. You may even go so far as to say that one-half hour a day is not enough. Perhaps it isn’t. But I am particularly anxious to have some of the advice in this book followed. And I greatly fear that if I advised more than a half hour most readers would serenely neglect my advice altogether. After you have been able for a month to devote at least one-half hour a day to thinking, you may then, if you choose, extend the time. But if you attempt to do too much at once, you may find it so inconvenient, if not impracticable, that you may give up attempting altogether. Throughout the book I have constantly kept in mind that I wish my advice followed. I have therefore laid down rules which may reasonably be adhered to by an average human, rules which do not require a hardened asceticism to apply, and rules which have occasionally been followed by the author himself. In this last respect, I flatter myself, the present differs from most books of advice.

> Above all I urge the reader to avoid falling into that habit so prevalent and at the same time so detrimental to character:—acquiescing in advice and not following it. You should view critically every sentence in this book. Wherever you find any advice which you think needless, or which requires unnecessary sacrifice to put into practice, or is wrong, you should so mark it. And you should think out for yourself what would be the best practice to follow. But when you agree with any advice you see here, you should make it your business to follow it. The fact that part of the advice may be wrong is no reason why you should not follow the part that is right.

> Most people honestly intend to follow advice, and actually start to do it, but... They try to practice everything at once. As a result they end by practicing nothing. The secret of practice is to learn thoroughly one thing at a time.

> As already stated, we act according to habit. The only way to break an old habit or to form a new one is to give our whole attention to the process. The new action will soon require less and less attention, until finally we shall do it automatically, without thought—in short, we shall have formed another habit. This accomplished we can turn to still others.

> Half a century later German liberalism was stone dead. The Kaiser’s Sozialpolitik, the statist system of government interference with business and of aggressive nationalism, had supplanted it. Nobody minded when the Rector of the Imperial University of Strassburg quietly characterized the German system of government thus: “Our officials ... will never tolerate anybody’s wresting the power from their hands, certainly not parliamentary majorities whom we know how to deal with in a masterly way. No kind of rule is endured so easily or accepted so gratefully as that of high-minded and highly educated civil servants. The German State is a State of the supremacy of officialdom—let us hope that it will remain so.”2

>> Next to being right in this world, the best of all things is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out somewhere.

> I think there's something to be said for hedging when you're not sure that an un-hedged version of what you're saying would be correct. Repeatedly being both overconfident and wrong (in light of existing knowledge, not in light of what people discover in the future) is a problem.

1. Regarding Question X, I don't know the answer, but my current best guess is Y.

2. Regarding Question X, I think Y is probably true.

Are both hedges? Is one more hedgey than the other?

Btw Hazlitt gives some examples of hedged statements I liked:

>One word more on this. There is a type of individual, most often met with among writers, who fears to make a statement of his thought definite, because he has a faint suspicion that it may be wrong. He wishes to allow himself plenty of loopholes to slip out of an intellectual position in case any one should attack it. Hence he never says outright, “Such and such is the case.” Instead, his talk or writing is guarded on all sides by such expressions as “It is probable that,” “it is possible that,” “the facts seem to indicate that”; or “such and such is perhaps the case.” Not satisfied with this he makes his statement less positive by preceding it with an “I believe,” or worse yet, with an “I am inclined to believe.”

"I am inclined to believe" is pretty close to an expression of Jonah Goldberg's I recall being criticized on vdare (I think it was "I tend to believe" or something like that)

> 1. Regarding Question X, I don't know the answer, but my current best guess is Y.

>

> 2. Regarding Question X, I think Y is probably true.

>

> Are both hedges? Is one more hedgey than the other?

I don't really know, but I'd guess that they are both hedges and that they are about equally "hedgey". It's hard to compare them, because the first one uses FI phrasing, and the second one uses anti-FI phrasing (assuming the issue is not a matter of probability).

> "I am inclined to believe" is pretty close to an expression of Jonah Goldberg's I recall being criticized on vdare (I think it was "I tend to believe" or something like that).

I think whether these hedges are good depends in part on whether you're trying to be polemical or whether you're trying to humbly seek the truth.

> DENVER—Prosecutors with the Denver District Attorney’s office today announced that Jerome Lucas, 34 was charged with two counts of sexual assault, one count of second degree kidnapping, one count of first degree burglary, and one count of assault in the second degree.

There should be a comma after "34".

It seems like ~all the news sites are unable find editors who understand commas. Or maybe they don't care about that and instead use other hiring criteria?

> After returning from the gym on March 24, 2019, the victim showered and then went to take the recycling out at approximately 1:20 pm leaving her door open but screen door closed.

Why did they put the (correct) comma after "2019"? Seems very similar to the one they left out after "34"!

And why didn't they put a comma before "leaving"?

Even if the editors suck, why don't the writers learn how writing works? Writing is their job... If I was a professional news article writer, I'd look up guides on how to write and do other professional skills development activities... Do they think all that matters to their career is how well they can inspire *strong emotions* (like outrage) that get people to share the article link?

Lambda School charges 17% of your income for two years after they teach you and you get a job. You only pay if you're making $50k/yr or more. No matter what you make, the payments are limited to $30k total. Alternatively, you can pay 20k up front instead of income-based repayment. This is less than half the price of *one* year at Harvard, and it teaches you enough programming to get a job after 9 months of classes.

> The political structure of Germany and France, in the last years preceding the fall of their democratic constitutions, was to a very great extent influenced by the fact that for a considerable part of the electorate the state was the source of income. There were not only the hosts of public employees, and those employed in the nationalized branches of business (e.g., railroad, post, telegraph, and telephone), there were the receivers of the unemployment dole and of social security benefits, as well as the farmers and some other groups which the government directly or indirectly subsidized. Their main concern was to get more out of the public funds. They did not care for “ideal” issues like liberty, justice, the supremacy of the law, and good government. They asked for more money, that was all. No candidate for parliament, provincial diets, or town councils could risk opposing the appetite of the public employees for a raise. The various political parties were eager to outdo one another in munificence.

> In the nineteenth century the parliaments were intent on restricting public expenditures as much as possible. But now thrift became despicable. Boundless spending was considered a wise policy. Both the party in power and the opposition strove for popularity by openhandedness. To create new offices with new employees was called a “positive” policy, and every attempt to prevent squandering public funds was disparaged as “negativism.”

> Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.

> This is one of the antinomies inherent in present-day constitutional issues. It has made many people despair of the future of democracy. As they became convinced that the trend toward more government interference with business, toward more offices with more employees, toward more doles and subsidies is inevitable, they could not help losing confidence in government by the people.

> Marxism provides a different interpretation of liberalism’s achievements. The main dogma of Karl Marx is the doctrine of the irreconcilable conflict of economic classes. Capitalist society is divided into classes the interests of which are antagonistic. Thus the class struggle is inevitable. It will disappear only in the future classless society of socialism.

> The most remarkable fact about this doctrine is that it has never been explicitly expounded. In the Communist Manifesto the instances used for the exemplification of class struggles are taken from the conflict between castes. Then Marx adds that the modern bourgeois society has established new classes. But he never said what a class is and what he had in mind in speaking of classes and class antagonisms and in coördinating classes to castes. All his writings center around these never-defined terms. Although indefatigable in publishing books and articles full of sophisticated definitions and scholastic hairsplitting, Marx never attempted to explain in unambiguous language what the characteristic mark of an economic class is. When he died, thirty-five years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto, he left the manuscript of the third volume of his main treatise, Capital, unfinished. And, very significantly, the manuscript breaks off just at the point at which the explanation of this fundamental notion of his entire philosophy was to be given. Neither Marx nor any one of the host of Marxian writers could tell us what a social class is, much less whether such social classes really play in the social structure the role assigned to them in the doctrine.

Deutsch told me long ago that moral knowledge *preceded* scientific knowledge. In short, it's because you cannot do science successfully if you're trying to cheat. You have to value the truth, and want to voluntarily obey the rigorous requirements of science, instead of looking for loopholes to get out of some parts of science.

CR is a universal epistemology. Nothing about the big ideas (e.g. that knowledge is created by evolution, which is an error-correcting process) is domain-specific. Conjecture and refutation works in every field. Empirical tests are a nice bonus in science but everything is always, ultimately, decided by critical argument. Tests never tell you what to conclude, you can always debate what they mean and how to apply them, and you can always come up with an infinity of claims which are compatible with every data point and reach any and every conclusion. What handles that is critical argument, not testing.

Also check out this dialog about non-foundationalist morality which I wrote based on conversations with Deutsch. http://curi.us/1169-morality

> Without having read all of Popper thoroughly, I believe that most of [Deutsch's epistemological] theory knowledge derives from [Popper].

Yes. If you're going to read more Popper, I recommend you use this guide to which selections to read:

People donate to charity because part of them knows that their own lives aren't very important and they aren't going to do anything great if they use the money on themselves. They don't want to invest in learning more and doing something that great; they don't like learning; they want someone else to worry about them instead; they don't really check what a charity actually does before donating (they don't know how to check, anyway, and don't want to think enough to find out). Also they think their kids aren't important, and won't ever do much, either, so that's why there's no need for the money to help their children's lives.

> The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau, what an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for!

> Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords.

How do you handle people on the street from organisations that usually try to guilt you to donate money monthly to save children in Africa if you start to interact with them (appart from just ignoring them)?

Do you give the money? Why?

Do you not give the money? Do you give reasons more than just 'don't want to'? What in that case?

> How do you handle people on the street from organisations that usually try to guilt you to donate money monthly to save children in Africa if you start to interact with them (appart from just ignoring them)?

> Do you give the money? Why?

> Do you not give the money? Do you give reasons more than just 'don't want to'? What in that case?

I usually do that too. This time I listened for a time for the "persuasion speech" (playing on guilt mostly) and then after some time said 'no thanks'. They still managed to play on my guilt though. I thought they wouldn't anymore.

What do you say when they ask "what can you do with $20 in a month compared to giving a child food for the whole month"?

> What do you say when they ask "what can you do with $20 in a month compared to giving a child food for the whole month"?

Your problem is you don't actually know the answer. You don't have clear ideas about this.

The short answer is the *causes* of that poverty problem are 1) violence. 2) political system. 3) bad culture. Food aid addresses none of these causes. At best, food aid is a band aid – giving a man a fish but not teaching him to fish.

Aid is often taken by violent thugs (whether they are government agents or not) or never reaches the intended people due to corruption/theft. Aid subsidizes and supports bad political regimes. If a regime fails to provide wealth to its citizens, and you step in and hand them some wealth, it helps the regime stay in power and limits complaints against it. Giving wealth to a country with a bad political system is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. It means the bastards in power will take even more for themselves, since now there is more to take. I won't cover culture now.

If you want to know what to think about issues like this, you have to learn to think for yourself, learn how to read and analyze, learn how to have critical discussions, and so on. You must learn philosophical skills to enable you to learn about e.g. political philosophy.

You will never learn much without a serious, concerted effort. You have to *decide* to learn and *try* to learn. And avoid being dishonest with yourself. Interested?

> Your problem is you don't actually know the answer. You don't have clear ideas about this.

This is correct. Especially the last part. And the ideas I have are contradicting. I am reading Rand and agree with what I read. Yet years and years of altruistic indoctrination is still there and comes up to surface - especially in discussion (such as the example mentioned) since there is little time to paus and reflect.

> The short answer is the *causes* of that poverty problem are 1) violence. 2) political system. 3) bad culture. Food aid addresses none of these causes. At best, food aid is a band aid – giving a man a fish but not teaching him to fish.

> Aid is often taken by violent thugs (whether they are government agents or not) or never reaches the intended people due to corruption/theft. Aid subsidizes and supports bad political regimes. If a regime fails to provide wealth to its citizens, and you step in and hand them some wealth, it helps the regime stay in power and limits complaints against it. Giving wealth to a country with a bad political system is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. It means the bastards in power will take even more for themselves, since now there is more to take. I won't cover culture now.

I agree. But the "fish" might still save some innocent lives. I understand that little will change if aid keeps coming (or at least much slower). But is not giving the aid still not just letting innocent children die? Should they be sacrificed for a better future? If so, on what moral ground?

> If you want to know what to think about issues like this, you have to learn to think for yourself, learn how to read and analyze, learn how to have critical discussions, and so on. You must learn philosophical skills to enable you to learn about e.g. political philosophy.

> You will never learn much without a serious, concerted effort. You have to *decide* to learn and *try* to learn. And avoid being dishonest with yourself. Interested?

> I agree. But the "fish" might still save some innocent lives. I understand that little will change if aid keeps coming (or at least much slower). But is not giving the aid still not just letting innocent children die? Should they be sacrificed for a better future? If so, on what moral ground?

Aid that is designed to solve the problem will *help more children* than aid which is not even trying to solve the problem. And most aid is not directed to children who will actually literally starve to death in the near future. A lot of aid is wasted and some help the bad guys, and even of the aid which has a substantial positive impact most is not about children starving. The issue has nothing to do with sacrificing anyone. If a charity said "hey we figured out how to save a few children in the short term and also we focus most of our efforts on the longer term" that would be fine, i wouldn't object to doing that instead of pure-longterm, but that charity does not exist, there is no one doing a good job of that.

Some novices dislike reading and strongly prefer audio/video. Some novices prefer learning through discussion, not reading, listening or watching. Some will read a bunch of books but don't want to say much.

Some novices have a bunch of relevant pre-existing opinions; some don't.

Some novices have time, money and mental energy. Some are low one one, two or all three of those resources.

Some novices have other things they want more, e.g. a girlfriend to have sex with. Some are in a stable long term relationship, or are old and already had plenty of sex, or haven't gone through puberty yet.

so it depends. there's no one-size-fits-all solution. you have to try some things (i've created a variety, and some other ppl have made good things too) and see what works ok for you and what problems you run into. and then, to make progress, you have to actually do things about problems. most ppl just kinda passively get stuck when they run into a problem. things to do about problems include brainstorming solutions and making concrete plans for specific steps you will take (and monitoring that you actually do it) or discussing the problem and asking for advice.

> This is correct. Especially the last part. And the ideas I have are contradicting. I am reading Rand and agree with what I read. Yet years and years of altruistic indoctrination is still there and comes up to surface - especially in discussion (such as the example mentioned) since there is little time to paus and reflect.

You may be interested in reading about the *harmony of men's interests*. Rand is good on this (see VoS ch. 4) but not the best. It's not a huge theme of hers. Mises and Bastiat say more about it.

Altruism vs. selfishness-that-sacrifices-others is a false dichotomy. Capitalism offers win/win interactions where everyone is better off. Capitalism, not charity, is what lifted the masses out of poverty so that now an American working an entry level job at Walmart is materially better off, by far, than a king from 500 years ago.

> If a charity said "hey we figured out how to save a few children in the short term and also we focus most of our efforts on the longer term" that would be fine, i wouldn't object to doing that instead of pure-longterm, but that charity does not exist, there is no one doing a good job of that.

So all in all, funding aid without it having a longterm goal of tackling the underlaying issues is just promoting the bad situation to continue?

> so it depends. there's no one-size-fits-all solution. you have to try some things (i've created a variety, and some other ppl have made good things too) and see what works ok for you and what problems you run into. and then, to make progress, you have to actually do things about problems. **most ppl just kinda passively get stuck when they run into a problem.** things to do about problems include brainstorming solutions and making concrete plans for specific steps you will take (and monitoring that you actually do it) or discussing the problem and asking for advice.

Yes. I can relate to this.

Good advice.

> You may be interested in reading about the *harmony of men's interests*. Rand is good on this (see VoS ch. 4) but not the best. It's not a huge theme of hers. Mises and Bastiat say more about it.

I am familiar with both. With Bastiat mostly through Hazlitt. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction on this subject.

#12539 That sentence is badly written. "the ability" doesn't say whose ability. I guess they mean "one's ability" (or even "your ability"). Reminds me of passive voice. Then it's also pretty hard to tell who "their" refers to. And it's hard to tell what the groupings joined by "and" are. These issues reinforce each other.

It's also harder to read because the intended meaning is stupid (see below) and isn't something you'd expect to read. It's easier to read ideas that make sense and are reasonable.

It's a bad sign about scholarship quality when they can't write a clear title.

The title does not match the abstract. The abstract basically says: some really shitty experiments with grossly inadequate controls and documentation, small N, and no replicability (if you do something similar you might get a similar result, but you'll never replicate that exact experiment) ... found the common sense fact that ppl are biased towards those they like and agree with more. Their basic point is ppl overrate the expertise of ppl they agree with on politics. Is that even an error? If someone is an SJW that is information indicating he's awful at thinking and I shouldn't trust him on any topic. But anyway, OK, that is their point. That is not what the title says. The title claims the bias makes you worse at *using* the expertise. That means not merely that you overrate it but you somehow be incapable of understanding/applying/something the expertise from the people you're biased in favor of. Nonsense.

#12539 You should say *why* you're sharing things. Did you think it was good? That is what a reasonable person would guess was your reason for sharing, but you've maintained enough deniability that it's kinda hard to ask you to post-mortem your error. A lot of culturally normal people would consider that overly aggressive by me. Nevertheless: https://curi.us/2190-errors-merit-post-mortems

> I don't feel like writings postmortems for errors in in my curi.us comments.

Why? Or maybe more to the point, what is your goal with these comments?

PS I noticed the doll thing. I too thought it was bad (actually you didn't say you think it was bad, I just guessed that, it would have been better if you stated your opinion). Some context, which some others might not know, is that patio11 has a high income and could definitely afford it.

> Sharing things isn't much of a goal. It's more means than end. What is the purpose or goal of doing that sharing?

Maybe people here will get something from one of my comments and do something good with it that I would enjoy. For example, maybe the idea or info would be mentioned in the newsletter, or somehow be used to inspire or improve a video, podcast, or FI post.

> This action coincides with my decision to forbid casual sex discussion on my forum, though not discussion of other game mechanics like meeting women and dating. I will share more about these decisions in the future, but as of now I’ll say that I can no longer be a central node that men use to commit morally questionable acts.

> I've found in a lot of communities / spaces where there are relaxed boundaries (relative to the world at large) there's, inevitably, certain people who take this as an invitation to more or less push things as far as they can go while pretending they're not really doing anything. And yeah, they're usually straight dudes, and yeah, their targets are usually the cute young girls, esp the ones who are new to the space, less connected, and generally speaking less prepared to take care of themselves.

> I'm reminded of the last time I read about the SF bay area rat community, inwhich someone involved was saying they felt guilty because random strangers showing up to hang out and have kinky sex parties in their living room made them uncomfortable and they didn't know what to do about it.

> Anyway, point is, while it certainly can be worthwhile and even important to have spaces where boundaries are looser, certain behaviors are permissible, etc etc, there's a really important lesson in that certain people tend to benefit from ambiguity, usually at the expense than others, so it's necessary to be clear about where the actual bounds of acceptable behavior are.

> Blurry boundaries usually exist precisely because they benefit certain people (who, coincidentally, hold more of the cards). It's not an accident, it's by design.

Blurry boundaries are also an issue with forum moderation and with law or rules in general.

The guy didn't claim "probably" has to be prefixed before any claim. His belief is presumably the standard one: I *know* I have a door, but I can't *prove* there is no god. You have to hedge with probability when you don't have proof.

Ofc their epistemology is confused but DD isn't speaking to the issue and is basically trolling. (The trolling starts at "So, you don't want to be correct?". His previous messages were fine.)

Interesting formula for distributing the gains from an enterprise to which participants contribute differently, such a business in which one person supplies the initial capital and the other people are workers.

> Even apparently negative stories, for example about how hard the workers are driven, benefit Amazon, much like a mobster's reputation: 'don't try competing with these guys'.

Short, interesting article. The basic point is stories like "amazon treats its business partners harshly (third party sellers)" and "amazon treats its warehouses employees harshly in giant, super-organized warehouses where amazon insists on efficiency" fit the narrative that amazon gets good deals for customers and is hard to compete with.

> Charles Kohlhase served as Mission Design Manager for Voyager from 1974 to 1989... Following Voyager, he was science and mission design manager for the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan.

Kohlhase said:

> "It was my job to come up with the master plan. It was the job, essentially, of mission architect, sort of like a glorified tour planner. Basically, I had to take the scientific objectives and then build a mission around them, considering everything and taking in all aspects, from the launch vehicle to scientific instruments, the scientists' goals, how we would use gravity assist, and so on -- and then determine what requirements every element places on the others."

It's effective to have someone responsible for planning things and taking all relevant knowledge and objectives into account. It would be good to take that approach to planning your life.

#12800 You have heard that advice before, probably 10+ times, in various forms. They don't teach how to actually do it and you don't know. It will not help you unless you do something about that problem.

> Before electric wires, did people have a way to transmit information faster than horses and pigeons? Yes! It was called the optical telegraph and was invented in the 18th century.

Tangent: I find "the 18th century" less clear than "the 1700s".

> Imagine a network of these towers, one every 10 miles or so. The two arms can be moved to create about 100 different symbols.

The lowtechmagazine article linked below says it was 196, not 100:

>> The semaphore had two signalling arms which each could be placed in seven positions. The wooden post itself could also be turned in 4 positions, so that 196 different positions were possible. Every one of these arrangements corresponded with a code for a letter, a number, a word or (a part of) a sentence.

Their system used lights and mirrors instead of semaphores to communicate between relay stations.

I watched Going Postal several years ago. I remember it being severely tarnished by anti-progress and anti-capitalist themes. But I do remember thinking the optical telegraph they used was an interesting pre-electronic idea for communication.

>Absolutely beautiful bowls, ordered 2-3 days ago and received today. I do the meal prep and I do the cooking at home. When I cooked last week for a group of Church friends and had to transport the food to the church I realized how antiquated our kitchen bowls were. So without telling the wife I got on my favorite website to shop, and today I received the benefit of that shopping episode. When the wife asked what got into me that i purchased kitchen stuff, I told her I had to because I was depressed so I went shopping. That diffused the encounter, so she said I totally understand because "that's what i do when i am depressed", success.

I found that amazon review for mixing bowls notable in a number of ways

He mentions he didn't tell his wife about his purchase of a very inexpensive item that served a need he thought he had

His purchase of kitchen stuff was apparently so out of character his wife asked what got into him. This despite the fact that he does the meal prep and apparently cooks for his church friends

He feels the need to use a psychiatric excuse to explain his purchase of a minor kitchen item when he's the primary cooking person

And apparently a major conflict was avoided cuz he describes the situation as being diffused

>Cold butter is ideal for baked goods that should be crisp. Butter that’s straight from the fridge doesn’t get fully incorporated into a batter; instead it gets broken down into small pieces throughout your dough. Since butter is about 18% water, steam is released in those pockets during baking, which helps create flaky layers. Use it in: scones, pie crust, biscuits and crispy cookies.

Initially the discussion wasn't focused enough. Messages were too long and said multiple things, some of which got ignored.

So my first thought was to focus and only deal with one thing at a time.

But I had a better idea: one question/argument/comment/criticism *and* one short answer.

So it's basically like two conversations at once, each of which is focused and goes one small step at a time. This way, we can each lead/control one of the conversations (half of the overall conversation). We both get to play the role of question asker and question answerer (at the same time, at all times, instead of taking turns and sometimes waiting). It's fair and working well.

This format can be used unilaterally. You can just ask one question and answer one question in each of your messages, and if the other guy says more things then you ignore them. And you can do it without saying what you're doing. But in this case I briefly explained my plan and the other guy seems to be fine with the format and going along with it.

#12840 If you had a conversation with more than 2 people, it's be much harder. 2 people results in 2 short parts per message. If there were 5 people, you could be writing up to 8 short parts per message (4 questions and 4 answers), and that's without dealing with anything said between 2 ppl who aren't you (it's treating a 5man conversation sorta like 2-man conversations between every pair of ppl at the same time). real 5man conversations are even harder b/c i'll want to comment on something said btwn 2 other ppl. the way ppl do 5man convos in practice is usually that 1-2 ppl have the main active role and the other ppl aren't fully involved.

They verbs they suggest you do are *feel* and *fall*. You don't have to think or act. They take care of everything and you're passive. You don't have to create your own fun, they create it for you. (So they claim.)

Atlas Shrugged, Dagny talking about a party:

> “There wasn’t a person there who enjoyed it,” she said, her voice lifeless, “or who thought or felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant.”

fun fact: if you have two factor authentication enabled on your Apple ID, and you are trying to sign into something with your Apple ID from an antiquated Mac OS that doesn’t support two factor authentication, you can simply append the 6 digit 2FA code to your password and sign in

> Mappers predominantly adopt the cognitive strategy of populating and integrating mental maps, then reading off the solution to any particular problem. They quickly find methods for achieving their objectives by consulting their maps. Packers become adept at retaining large numbers o[f] knowledge packets. Their singular objective is performing the 'correct' action. Strategies for resolving 'hash collisions', where more than one action might fit a circumstance are \ad hoc\.

> What is packing? Well, you just stop yourself asking `Why?'. You never really clean up your map of the world, so you don't find many of the underlying patterns that mappers use to `cheat'. You learn slower, because you learn little pockets of knowledge that you can't check all the way through, so lots of little problems crop up. You rarely get to the point where you've got so much of the map sorted out you can just see how the rest of it develops.

> With no map of the world that checks out against itself and explains just about everything you can see, it is very hard to be confident about what to do. The approach you have to take in any situation is to cast about frantically until you find a little packet of knowledge that kind of fits (everything has a little bit of daydreaming at its core, but the confused objective is to stop it as soon as humanly possible). Then you list the bits that kind of fit, and you assert that the situation is one of those, so the response is specified by your `knowledge'.

> Your friend has happened to grab another packet of `knowledge' and so you begin an `argument' where your friend lists bits of your knowledge that don't fit and says that you are wrong and he is right, and you do the same thing. You don't attempt to build a map that includes both your bits of knowledge and so illuminates the true answer...

> Not having a big map means that you often don't understand what is happening, even in familiar settings like your home or workplace. You assume that this means that you do not possess the appropriate knowledge packet, and this may be seen as a moral failure on your part. After all, you have been told since childhood that the good acquire knowledge packets and stack them up in their heads like dinner plates, the lazy do not.

> You are also overly concerned about certainty. Mappers have a rich, strong, self-connected structure they can explore in detail and check the situation and their actions against. Logic for them is being true to the map, and being honest when it stops working. It's not a problem, they just change it until it's `logical' again. Without mapping, you have to use rickety chains of reasoning that are really only supported at one end. Because they are rickety you get very worried that each link is absolute, certain, totally correct (which you can never actually achieve). You have to discount evidence that is not `certain' (although tragically it might be if your map was bigger), and often constrain your actions to those that you can convince yourself are totally certain in an inherently uncertain world.

> An aspect of packer thinking that drives mappers up the wall, is that packers often seem to neither seek out the flaws in their own logic, nor even hear them when they utter them. Worse, when flaws are pointed out to them, they are likely to react by justifying following logic that they cheerfully admit is flawed, on grounds of administrative convenience. The evidence of their own senses [?] is not as important as behaviour learned through repetition, and they seem to have no sense of proportion when performing cost/benefit analyses. This is because packers do not create integrated conceptual pictures from as much as possible of what they know. The mapper may point out a fact, but it is one fact amongst so many. The packer does not have a conceptual picture of the situation that indicates the important issues, so the principal source of guidance is a set of procedural responses that specify action to be taken. The procedure that is selected to be followed will be something of a lottery. For the mapper, one fact that should fit the map but doesn't, means the whole map is suspect.

At the Dem debate last night, Booker said if you need a license to drive a car, you should get a license to own guns.

But you only need a license to drive on public roads, not your own property.

So Booker's reasoning kinda works if you want to say people should have a license for concealed carry (since they'll be going in public places, sidewalks etc). But i think it doesn't work at all for self defense in the home, which is a major use case for firearms

I have other objections to Booker's position. I'm just choosing to bring up this one small point cuz I just thought of it

During the Great Depression, a Communist got hired as an artist by the [Works Progress Administration] to paint shit around San Francisco. So he painted a mural in a high school of white settlers bloodily oppressing Indians and slaves. But today, the graphic images are, according to certain shitlibs, too offensive, even though they were intended to depict Anglos in a very negative light. So some of the shitlibs are trying to have the murals painted over, and other shitlibs are trying to save them.

>> I'd prefer not to talk about my motives though, save for one. And that is that Elliot is a truly toxic person

"toxic person" is vague. The more literal meaning (poisonous) doesn't apply, which leaves us with a metaphorical usage that basically means "very bad/harmful" (one might also describe a relationship in this way, as a "toxic relationship", meaning the relationship is bad, harmful, cuz there's e.g. lots of fighting or whatever).

but why is curi man bad? his badness is just asserted.

then we have the modifier "truly." This is being used to indicate some sincerity, genuineness, and truthfulness on the part of the writer. But the writer isn't interested in having a truth-seeking dialogue or engaging in honest truth-seeking. They are just hatefully lashing out. So "truly" is a lie in this context.

>>that has harmed many good people.

Which people, when, how, and on what basis do you judge the people as good?

>>And that hurts me.

#12194 is choosing to be hurt by a particular interpretation of circumstances and events which they are uninterested in getting criticism about, and then bragging online about what a good person they are for their feelings.

Now to the most recent reply:

> It's telling that multiple people have said this about Elliot,

calling it "telling" is vague. what does it tell us and how does it tell us that?

>but other intellectuals don't get those kinds of comments.

"those kinds of comments" is also vague. There are ways the quoted comment could be categorized which come up with other intellectuals too.

E.g. people claim that an intellectual caused some harm or problem in someone's life. See:

> I'm not perfect. I'd prefer not to talk about my motives though, save for one. And that is that Elliot is a truly toxic person that has harmed many good people. And that hurts me.

in the 2nd sentence of this quote, the anon indicates that he's going to say what his motive is. so I expected to read about it in the next sentence. but the next sentence does not mention a motive. it just asserts that Elliot is bad and hurts people. an assertion that something is true is not a motive.

> When Elliot abuses you I highly recommend you repeat his behaviours back at him.

> He can't stand his reflection in a mirror. As he attacks it, his every insult is really an admission of what he truly is.

this is advocating revenge. it's saying that if you think Elliot did something bad to you, do it back to him. the purpose is intended to hurt Elliot back, with the hope (I assume) that Elliot would stop whatever he was doing.

what about the case where you're wrong that Elliot did something bad to you? in that case, you'd be doing things intended to hurt Elliot when he was not intending to hurt you. you'd be acting like an asshole.

a related point: if you think somebody did something bad to you, instead of doing it back to them, why don't you move on with your life? just stop interacting with Elliot. that would be much better for you (and everybody else).

to be clear: a much much much better scenario would involve you engaging in critical discussion purposed for finding the truth about whether or not Elliot tried to hurt you.

> It's an explanation from a particular perspective I am not interested in learning. Obviously this is not true for all people and cultures across the planet. Not sure why I have to spell out 'errors' in something I don't want or need.

> I dunno. The material is being presented in a way like I would be preying on normal people by studying their ways and patterns. To my knowledge it's not slander to give my impression of what something makes me feel.

that doesn't make sense. let's look at an example. if someone felt that jews prey on poor people after having seen them doing various actions, and then he said publicly, "jews prey on poor people", that would be slander. this is a case of someone giving his impression of what something makes him feel, and it's slander.

the anon seems to think that if something is a feeling, it can't be wrong.

that's similar to how people think that if someone is angry, you can't say their feeling of anger is wrong. the anger just is. but that's wrong. feelings can be wrong.

> Our objectivist education, however, was not confined to lectures and books. One time, at dinner, I complained that my brother was hogging all the food.

> "He's being selfish!" I whined to my father.

he meant selfish in the sense of getting what you want and hurting others in the process (win/lose interactions).

> "Being selfish is a good thing," he said. "To be selfless is to deny one's self. To be selfish is to embrace the self, and accept your wants and needs."

the dad is referring to selfishness in the sense that Rand advocated (win/win interactions).

> It was my dad's classic response -- a grandiose philosophical answer to a simple real-world problem. But who cared about logic? All I wanted was another serving of mashed potatoes.

Dad could have asked if he'd like him to make more mashed potatoes. that might have led to a win/win. or they could have talked about what to do next time they have dinner, e.g. making more mashed potatoes than he usually made purposed for their being leftovers instead somebody not getting enough mashed potatoes to suit their preferences.

#12911 They are doing *ad hoc* epistemology. This is bad because people in the field are not learning from them *and vice versa*.

Lots of people do ad hoc epistemology and then it never gets connected together in some single place and evaluated and compared. It's all floating around separately. Lots of it reinvents other stuff that already exists, sometimes with some improvements, usually with major ways it's worse.

They aren't getting criticism from philosophers. They aren't mapping how their view relates to what's already known in the field or to the other ad hoc epistemology which, like this, hasn't really been added to the field, so it's hard for someone researching epistemology to find.

Short, early scene from Hellbender by Frank J (author of the IMAO blog). Doug got fired and then we find out what Lulu's job is and how she keeps it. It's like a cutaway besides the last paragraph. Warfs are war orphans and are looked down on.

# Hellbender Scene

Lulu was sitting at her desk, busy painting each of her fingernails a different color, when her boss, Robin, walked up to Lulu’s desk. The middle-aged woman was making a visible effort to keep a neutral expression, “Ms. Liu, we need to talk.”

Lulu responded with a big smile. “I love talking!”

Robin looked at Lulu quizzically. “Are you wearing cat ears?”

“Yep.” Lulu flicked her ears. Also, she had painted her nose black and drawn on whiskers. “Meow! I’m a cat!”

“Well, okay. So —“

Lulu stood up. “Thanks for this job, by the way. I know you don’t usually trust warfs to work in the propaganda department.”

Lulu nodded. “See, I wouldn’t have thought of that; that’s why you’re so good at this propaganda. Anyway, I want you to know that you’re right to give me a chance. I know people like you who run this country think we warfs are untrustworthy and are seething with hatred of you. And that we dream every day of nothing more than seeing you all suffer — perhaps watching gleefully as you weep as everything you ever worked for burns.”

“Well, I don’t know that —“

Lulu raised a finger. “I’m not done. And if we could, we’d get some chemical weapons and release it all on you in one of your snooty parties on the side of the town we never get to go to. And then you’d all be screaming and bleeding out your eyeballs. And we’d just stand there with gas masks on, watching quietly — the happiness we’d be feeling almost too much for a human to bear. And then you’d scream for mercy and offer us all your riches to spare you, but we’d refuse because all we want is your pain and misery.” Lulu sat back down at her desk. “I know that’s what a lot of you think of us warfs, but I want you to know it’s not completely true.”

Robin was quiet for a few seconds. “Okay. Um ... so I wanted to talk about your latest work.”

“Great. I worked really hard on those posters.”

“Yes ... but there are some problems with them.”

Robin laid one down on Lulu’s desk. It was a drawing of a man holding a gun to his own head with a phrase above: “JUST DO IT.”

“I like this one,” Lulu said.

Robin frowned. “Well, it seems to be encouraging people to commit suicide.”

Lulu shook her head. “No, that’s not it at all. You see, it’s symbolic. The gun represents the truth, and he’s supposed to be using the truth to blow away any bad thoughts he has.”

“Well ... that interpretation is not really obvious.”

“Yeah, but if I make it too obvious,” Lulu said, “then I’m just calling whoever looks at it stupid — like, ‘You wouldn’t get this unless I explained it to you.’ People don’t like that.”

“Okay, um ...” Robin set down another poster. “Here’s another one you made.”

On the poster was a person punching out a man in uniform with the phrase, “GO FOR IT!”

Lulu nodded. “Pretty dynamic, huh?”

“Well ... um ... you seem to be encouraging people to attack peacekeepers.”

Lulu looked confused. “And we don’t want that?”

Robin shook her head. “No.”

“Oh, I thought we all hated the police. They’re always in our business.” Lulu faked a gruff voice. “’Why are you loitering here? And where did that bloodstain come from?’” Lulu sighed. “So annoying.”

“Well, the purpose of the material we’re making is to promote the government of the Confederacy of Astara. And the peacekeepers work for that government.”

“Oh!” Lulu slapped her forehead. “Okay, I think I get it now. I’ll fix that one; I’ll make him punch out a clown instead. Everyone hates clowns.”

“Well, that’s not really ... let’s just move on.”

Robin put another poster on Lulu’s desk. This one was a drawing of numerous happy cartoon bunnies.

“That may be true,” Robin said. “But the problem is what you wrote on it.” Robin pointed to the large letters at the top of the poster, which said, “OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT.”

Lulu frowned. “Oh boy; sorry. That one is a typo.”

“What’s it supposed to say?”

Lulu thought for a few seconds as she tapped her fingers on her desk. “Um ...” She rubbed her temple. “Uh ...” She touched her fingertips together. “It’s supposed to say ...” She let out a deep breath. “... don’t overthrow the government.”

“Lulu, I don’t think this is working out. You need to —“

“You talk when you sleep,” Lulu interrupted.

Robin’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”

Lulu laughed and stood up from her desk. “I’m being silly. How could I know that unless I know where you live and have found a way to break into your house and could easily do things to you while you sleep?”

“And then I asked if I could have the rest of the day off since I was all creatived out, and she was okay with that,” Lulu said. “So if you want to keep your job, you just have to learn to manage your boss. Do that, and she’ll leave you alone to do your own thing until her inevitable mental breakdown.”

>Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has been branded an extortionist by attendees of her recent $5,700-per-head wellness summit hosted by her “Goop” lifestyle brand, Page Six reports.

> One attendee of the weekend summit in London reportedly sent a WhatsApp message to fellow attendees branding the actress a “fucking extortionist” after being asked to book two nights at the Kimpton Fitzroy London Hotel through Goop.

> Attendees later discovered that standard rooms started at $250 a night but rooms booked through Goop were suites with a “gluten-free” breakfast thrown in.

> The summit in London was billed as “a mind-body-soul reset” retreat where guests would receive tips about “hydrating mindfully” and “channeling God through creativity,” as well as a seminar and panel discussions featuring Paltrow, Penelope Cruz, and Twiggy.

> However, guests pointed out that Paltrow did not open herself up to attendees and complained that organizers aggressively tried to sell them Goop merchandise.

> “Gwyneth acts like she’s a health goddess, but actually she’s a pretentious, greedy extortionist. She had a ton of security . . . She was unapproachable,” one attendee told Page Six. “She did the minimum, a few fireside chats with Twiggy and Penelope Cruz, then she put on her Birkenstocks and snuck out… I was a huge fan of Gwyneth; now I feel like I have lost my faith in God.”

> A representative for Goop told the newspaper that the real value of the weekend was closer to $8,000 but guests received a plethora of free extras including “golden facials” and “far-infrared gemstone therapy.”

I thought the explicit statement "now I feel like I have lost my faith in God" was interesting.

I have noticed that Twitter (to take one example) heavily pushes celebrity worship along with its left-wing politics. I don't think that is a coincidence. People who reject traditional godly judeo-christian culture still want something to worship. Modern celebrity culture encourages people to worship celebrities, and so many people do. This allows these celebrities to do things like charge close to $6k for low-value weekend summits.

Also, if Ayn Rand were writing a novel that had some details making fun of certain aspects of modern culture, I think she'd have a hard time doing better than stuff like:

#12970 Google it. It appears to be rare, vaccinated, and hard to diagnose accurately (looks similar to some other things). So you probably don't have it. But maybe, if you have symptoms, you have something. A doctor could help.

The machine moves underground like a worm with a flat face, but the face is actually a spinning disc with cutting edges. Behind the cutting face, circular tunnel walls are assembled from pre-manufactured pieces. Once a new circular ring of tunnel has been assembled, the machine pushes forward some more. The machine has a long conveyor belt to carry the dirt away.

In the above video, Rick Beato explains many of the instrumental, melodic, rhythmic, and even production elements of *Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic* by The Police. He doesn’t say much about the song’s lyrics.

#12993 Interesting question. I don't yet know of a reasonable way, using only a calculator, to get the exact answer or even get a good estimate the answer.

I wrote a simulation in Go. If the probability of heads on an individual flip is 0.71 (as in #12992), the program says that the average of the largest absolute value of the running tally seen during each game is about 42.70. If the probability of heads is 0.5, the average is only around 12.05.

> We may characterize the walker’s progress by the net distance D_N traveled in N steps.

Feynman wants to know *the net distance traveled after N steps*. My simulation from #12994 averages the *maximum net distance seen after any of the N steps*.

> We might, therefore, ask what is his average distance travelled in absolute value, that is, what is the average of |D|.

I'm unclear on what Feynman means by D with no subscript. I think variables with no subscript are often used to refer to an entire array, so one thing he could mean is (|D_1| + |D_2| + ... + |D_N|)/N. However, given the context, I think it makes more sense for D with no subscript to refer to D_N, i.e., the distance between the player and the horizontal origin line at the end of the game. In any event, Feynman doesn't give a way to calculate |D|. He goes on to say:

> It is, however, more convenient to deal with another measure of “progress,” the square of the distance: D^2 is positive for either positive or negative motion, and is therefore a reasonable measure of such random wandering.

Feynman then shows that:

> ⟨D^2 N⟩=N

where ⟨X⟩ means *the expected value of X*.

I wrote a modified simulation that tries to simulate the quantity Feynman is calculating. The modified simulation computes the *square* of the distance from the origin at the *end* of each game, sums these squares over all games, and reports the average. For 100 flips with a fair coin, it reports the average as 99.99. This is pretty close to the value given by Feynman's formula above when N=100, i.e., 100.

> If we wish a number like a distance, rather than a distance squared, to represent the “progress made away from the origin” in a random walk, we can use the “root-mean-square distance” D_rms:

> D_rms =√⟨D^2⟩ = √N

The output of the modified simulation above appears to approach N when simulating games with N flips. The square root of that output would be √N, the same as given by Feynman's formula.

Conclusions: Feynman is calculating things based on *the distance from the origin line reached after N steps*, while my simulation from #12994 was calculating the "max deviation at any time", per #12993. I think that explains the discrepancy.

Actually, it doesn't entirely explain the discrepancy. Another factor is that my simulation was calculating <|D_N|> in Feynman's notation (the expected value of the absolute value of the deviation after N steps), not a squared value or a square root of the sum of the squares.

> I don't know why you think squaring and then squarerooting would matter (change things) compared to using absolute value.

Say you only simulate two games. Say the distance at the end of the first game is 2 and the distance at the end of the second game is 3. If you square both of those and sum the result, you get 2*2+3*3=4+9=13. The square root of 13 is about 3.6. If, on the other hand, you take the absolute value of each and then take the average of those, you get (|2|+|3|)/2 = 5/2 = 2.5.

The only way you sum squares before squarerooting is if you also average them before squarerooting. That maybe comes out a bit differently (avging squares instead of the originals) but is a reasonable number unlike the procedure of squaring individual things, summing squares, and doing a single sqaureroot of that total.

With your way, basically you forgot to do the averaging step in the first math but not the second math. If you divided the 13 by 2 to average it, you would get 6.5. Square root that and get 2.55 (similar but not identical to the other answer of 2.5)

> With your way, basically you forgot to do the averaging step in the first math but not the second math. If you divided the 13 by 2 to average it, you would get 6.5. Square root that and get 2.55 (similar but not identical to the other answer of 2.5)

Yes, I forgot to average in the first calculatio of #13002. As you say, the results of the two procedures are still different, even when averaging is applied to both.

#12986 It's cool how much detail knowledge he has. There are some danger signs of possible shallowness for some of it (there are too many things that he under-explains about note combinations being interesting but he doesn't say much about *why* besides some jargon terms and saying some things are unusual), but also lots of signs he knows a lot of things he didn't include in the video.

I think it's an example of what I'm talking about when I say there are a million things you can get good at, and the main issue is to have really high skill at something. That's based on the guess that he knows far more than he says – basically that if you asked him for more details on specific things he said in the video, for most of them he'd be able to talk for over an hour saying more and explaining in detail (and without relying on unexplained jargon) what he actually means.

#13007 I wasn't paying much attention and the second link was wrong. I've fixed it now.

Also you can use citations from stuff you like to find more stuff. E.g. see citation 37 by Rand in *Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal*.

Why do you want other books, anyway? Don't you have plenty to read that you have not yet read (let alone written about and exposed your understanding of to criticism – without treating error correction as a high priority, reading is not very effective and results in tons of misconceptions about what one read)? Did you have some kind of objection to some of the books/authors I recommend, some unstated, hidden, unresolved criticism?

Here is a postmortem on 12 errors I found in the 9 comments I wrote here yesterday. For some errors, I was able to propose a best practice that I think would be a good idea for me to follow going forward and which would help prevent the error in the future. For other errors, I'm not clear on how to proceed.

# Purpose of this postmortem

I am interested in making fewer errors in what I think and say. I think that writing postmortems on my errors and sharing the results here will help me learn how to make fewer errors.

For now, I want to focus on errors in my comments. The kinds of comment errors that I currently care about are:

- false statements, unclear statements, or non sequiturs

- grammar/spelling/formatting errors (including typos)

- boring statements

I'd appreciate feedback on any of my comment errors that fall into one or more of those categories. I'm also interested in criticism of the categories themselves.

A list of the errors I found follows. I use the notation #C.E to refer to a particular error in a particular comment, where C is the comment number (assigned by curi.us) and E is the error number within the comment (assigned by me). Example: #12996.2 refers to the second error in comment #12996.

Here's what happened. Imgur gives you a one-click way to copy a URL for your Imgur post, and that's the URL I used. However, that URL is a link to Imgur's web page for the post, not a direct link to the image itself, which is what Markdown image URLs require.

Once I saw my comment displayed with the broken image, I knew, almost immediately, what the problem was. Somehow, though, when posting, I didn't make the connection. Maybe this is a one-off error. If so, then I won't concern myself with it for now. If not, then I'm not clear on what I need to know or do differently to avoid this mistake going forward.

This error could be viewed as two false statements that stemmed from the same mix-up. Namely, when discussing what "|D|" meant in Feynman's notation, I mixed up "|D|" and "the average of |D|".

I first quoted Feynman as follows:

>> We might, therefore, ask what is his average distance travelled in absolute value, that is, what is the average of |D|.

I then commented:

> I'm unclear on what Feynman means by D with no subscript. I think variables with no subscript are often used to refer to an entire array, so one thing he could mean is (|D_1| + |D_2| + ... + |D_N|)/N.

The final sentence contains the false statement. The problem is that the math expression is an average, and "D with no subscript" wouldn't refer to an average. Indeed, Feynman himself referred to "the average of |D|", and he isn't talking about averages of averages here, so |D| itself wouldn't be an average.

Here's a better version of my text above (with changes set off in asterisks):

> I'm unclear on what Feynman means by *"the average of |D|"*. I think variables with no subscript are often used to refer to an entire array, so one thing he could mean is (|D_1| + |D_2| + ... + |D_N|)/N.

> However, given the context, I think it makes more sense for D with no subscript to refer to D_N, i.e., the distance between the player and the horizontal origin line at the end of the game. In any event, Feynman doesn't give a way to calculate |D|.

If by |D| Feynman means |D_N| (which is the best interpretation), then that last sentence is false, because Feynman *does* give a way to calculate |D_N|. It's just, as he writes: "the net distance D_N traveled in N steps."

What I should have written is that Feynman doesn't give a way to calculate *the average of |D|*.

This error and the previous one (#12996.1) may have happened because I forgot what I was writing about. Maybe I got too caught up in the details. Maybe the best practice is to somehow always keep the big picture in mind. To that end, maybe I should ask myself more often: "What am I actually trying to do here?" I dunno.

At any rate, here's a better version of my text above (with changes set off in asterisks):

> However, given the context, I think it makes more sense for *D* to refer to D_N, i.e., the distance between the player and the horizontal origin line at the end of the game. *In that case, "the average of |D|" would mean "the average of |D_N|".* In any event, Feynman doesn't give a way to calculate *the average of* |D|.

I quoted Feynman's formula “⟨D^2 N⟩=N” without giving much explanation for the uncommon symbols it uses. I only explained the angle brackets. It would have been better for me to explain in English what I thought the entire formula meant, e.g.: "The expected value of the square of the distance traveled after N steps is equal to N".

> Feynman is calculating things based on *the distance from the origin line reached after N steps*, while my simulation from #12994 was calculating the "max deviation at any time", per #12993. I think that explains the discrepancy.

The final sentence is false. (I'm ignoring the fact that I qualified it with "I think ...".) While the issue I raised there is indeed *part* of the discrepancy between my simulation and Feynman's calculations, it doesn't fully explain the discrepancy. Even if I changed my simulation to use the distance at the end of the game rather than the max distance at any point during the game, the output still wouldn't match Feynman's calculations. The remaining difference is that Feynman is using the *root mean squared ("rms")* measure of distance, while my simulation reports the *average of the absolute value* of the distance.

I noticed there was a problem here within 4 minutes of posting the comment. At 10:31 PM I posted #12996 (the comment containing the error), and at 10:35 PM, I posted #12998, which tried to correct the error. Unfortunately, I still didn't understand the full cause of the discrepancy. As a result, #12998 explained the other cause incorrectly.

Since I noticed the mistake relatively quickly, maybe I would have caught it in advance if I had somehow thought more carefully before posting. However, I think best practices should have more content than merely "think more carefully". Also, I'd like to avoid having *thought* the error in the first place.

One way I could have caught this error in advance, even without thinking more carefully, is to have written a modified version of the simulation that fixed the issue I initially mentioned and then see if the new output agreed with Feynman's calculations. It wouldn't have agreed, so I would hopefully have realized that I made a mistake.

I think the best practice here is: *always check the sender name before publishing any post/email/tweet/etc.* That could help with problems other than forgetting to put in the author's name. For example, say one is posting comments under different identities. In this situation, the policy also helps ensure that the post content matches the author.

>> I don't know why you think squaring and then squarerooting would matter (change things) compared to using absolute value.

I replied:

> Say you only simulate two games. Say the distance at the end of the first game is 2 and the distance at the end of the second game is 3.

Okay so far.

> If you square both of those and sum the result, you get 2*2+3*3=4+9=13. The square root of 13 is about 3.6. If, on the other hand, you take the absolute value of each and then take the average of those, you get (|2|+|3|)/2 = 5/2 = 2.5.

That text is a non sequitur. It doesn't address curi's point. The problem is that I forgot to do any averaging when squaring and square rooting, but I did do averaging when using the absolute value. The right thing to do would be, as curi pointed out in #13004, to use averaging in both computations.

I don't think my error was due to a fundamental misunderstanding about the squaring/averaging/square rooting process (but I could be wrong about that). Here are some reasons:

- I understood my error almost immediately when curi pointed it out in #13004.

- In a part of #13005 which I wrote as a response to #13003 before reading curi's #13004, I correctly described the squaring/averaging/square rooting process:

> One way to calculate the expected value of X squared, when X is a finite list of values (as in a simulation), is to square each value in X, add up the results, and divide by the length of X.

- In #12996, I described the squaring/averaging/square rooting process correctly:

> The modified simulation computes the *square* of the distance from the origin at the *end* of each game, sums these squares over all games, and reports the average... The square root of that output would be √N, the same as given by Feynman's formula.

But in #13002, for some reason, I made this mistake. I must be lacking some knowledge, otherwise I wouldn't have made the mistake. What am I missing?

How did that typo slip through? I may have overlooked the red underline indicating the spelling error. Or maybe I noticed the red underline, decided I would fix it later, and then forgot to fix it. Maybe the best practice here is to always fix trivial errors just about as soon as I notice them.

# Conclusions

In total, I counted:

- 4 false statements

- 3 formatting errors

- 2 grammar errors

- 1 unclear statement

- 1 typo

- 1 non sequitur

I lack good ways to avoid the false statements and non sequiturs. Those are the mistakes which I regard as the most serious.

#13016 Thank you. I recently "audiobooked" (listened to) Allen Carr's *Easy Way to Stop Smoking*. I found it somewhat repetitive at times.

My brief summary of the "easy way to ..." would be:

1) Identify **why** you do that which you wish to change (I'll refer to it as a "bad habit" below)

2) Determine whether you **really** want to change the bad habit or not

3) Stop with the bad habit - since there is no reason to stick with it once you identify the reason and you do not want to keep it (be rational about it)

I did not take notes even though I intended to at first. I do +95% of my listening of books on the run / walk / gym etc and even though I do some bookmarking I rarely revisit it. I could put much more though into it, but I want to move on to the next subject too fast. I should try to discuss books. I just never end up doing it.

> Also you can use citations from stuff you like to find more stuff. E.g. see citation 37 by Rand in *Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal*.

Do you mean cite part of the books / texts that I have questions on?

> Why do you want other books, anyway? Don't you have plenty to read that you have not yet read (let alone written about and exposed your understanding of to criticism – without treating error correction as a high priority, reading is not very effective and results in tons of misconceptions about what one read)? Did you have some kind of objection to some of the books/authors I recommend, some unstated, hidden, unresolved criticism?

I want to learn better ways to learn than the ones I have at present. I do find it hard to change my old ways. My old ways are "just read / listen". They are not good, yet I find it really hard to change it. I fear it will be a waste of time and that I could have read more stuff in the meantime instead (even though it is using the bad method / way).

Before I have read mostly Mises (or other Austrians). I have read mostly Rand recently, and I started with DD as well. I was reading some Szasz in between but started to get all over the place in the end, just scratching on the surface of all kind of subjects. I want to understand Rand's ideas deeper though so I want to focus on her.

That always brings me to wanting to understand epistemology better - to be able to follow from there, but I found OPAR confusing as it started up with a consciousness section.

I did post questions on it (OPAR) but I needed to start with something less complicated. I was overreaching.

Where do you recommend I start regarding epistemology?

Regarding the Gilded Age, I just like that period and was looking for some books that do not talk about "evil robber barons" but of the greatness of men.

Try doing it and pay careful attention to how you feel while doing it, what the problems are, what seems are or bad in any way. Focus on understanding what's going on, not on reaching conclusions or trying to change. I bet there are things you don't like about it.

> I lack good ways to avoid the false statements and non sequiturs. Those are the mistakes which I regard as the most serious.

Do you have practice avoiding those things? Have you successfully avoided them a bunch of times in the past when doing other stuff? Cuz if not, I think you should work on avoiding them with something simpler first. With the math from this thread, you're dealing with two sources of difficulty at once: both 1) avoiding false statements and non sequiturs; and 2) dealing with the semi-complex math topic regarding random walks, square roots, averages, absolute values, etc.

> I believe the word "post-mortem" has a hyphen... Unless you have like some actual good information, I would go with a hyphen.

I did some research. Here's what I found.

- According to Google Ngrams, "postmortem" became more popular than "post-mortem" or "post mortem" in the 1970s. From the 1970s back to around 1840, "post-mortem" was the most popular. Before that, "post mortem" was the most popular.

I will take this path and work on getting better on improving posting related questions after taking the steps below.

> Try doing it and pay careful attention to how you feel while doing it, what the problems are, what seems are or bad in any way. Focus on understanding what's going on, not on reaching conclusions or trying to change. I bet there are things you don't like about it.

This helps out with my confusion on introspection. I will apply this approach. Thank you. I have been too focused on judgement.

I have a low opinion of that author and a low opinion of ARI in 2008. Here is a message that Locke emailed me a few years ago:

> ( agree totally with HB. I am not interested in your views.

He also wrote a paper trashing Popper which showed his gross ignorance of Popper (basically he attacked the straw men you sometimes see in secondary sources on Popper) combined with not being self-aware (introspective) enough to know he'd never learned what Popper's views are. Later, after writing that paper attacking Popper, he said something amazing about how extraordinarily ignorant of Popper he is: "I did not know he [Popper] was into politics".

Locke also claimed that similarity is known by direct perception, not by intelligent thought, and that this has been established in animals by research (and that he hadn't read the research recently, so could give no details, cites or arguments, but he was claiming it anyway).

If a video has 60 frames per second and 600 Kbps (kilobits per second), then to some approximate every frame has 10,000 bits of information. That means there are 2^10000 possible images that could be displayed in each frame and the bits specify which of those images to display. Each bit narrows down the images by half. (If there were 4 possible images, then one bit would narrow it down to 2 and a second bit would narrow it down to 1. To narrow down 2^N possibilities to 1 possibility requires N bits. And it's the same with messages – actually an image is a special case of a message.)

Common video codecs encode a lot of data as *changes* from the previous frame, rather than as a full image, so it's actually pretty different when done that way. "Keyframes", which might happen every 2 seconds (or earlier for a large change to the image), are when it starts over and specifies a full image instead of a changeset.

> ... and then this "boring statements" one, this is much harder to evaluate – like "was that boring" – than the other things. So I think it doesn't fit with the other ones perfectly. It's more "subjective". Like what is boring is a tricky topic. And what is boring also varies by person, that is, varies by the subject.

Good points. I don't need to deal with that kind of complexity right now. Consider "boring statements" removed from the list.

Suppose I start making too many boring statements in the future. Then I'll consider adding an item about boring statements back to the list of error categories I care about.

> This correction is actually not really clear, because it's like he should have written X, but he doesn't say what it replaces... In general, it's good policy to say, "change X to Y" when you're doing a correction.

Good point.

> I think what he's doing is it's the exact quote except for the words in italics, and the words in italics are additions. That's my guess about what it means. But that policy of like add additions in italics in an otherwise exact quote is not universal and is not the only policy someone might use.

Yeah. I started with an exact quote inside quotation marks, then made some changes inside the quotation marks, and set off the changes in italics. But I didn't explain what I was doing with the quotation marks and italics. That was unclear.

When there's a conjunction, you can read some words from the beginning of the first conjunct as being implied at the beginning of each of the subsequent conjuncts. For example, consider the sentence: "He went to the store and the gym." Here, you can read "He went to" as being implied before "the gym".

In the incorrect sentence from #12994, "get" is explicit in both conjuncts, not implied. Therefore, the only remaining word that could be implied is "to", but that would have to go right after the "or", which results in a grammar error called a "split infinitive": the infinitive "to get" is split into "to even get".

My fix was to write more words explicitly, so that zero words are implied: I proposed changing "or even get" to "or even to get".

The error could *also* be fixed (Elliot's suggestion) by implying *two* words: "to get". Elliot proposed changing "or even get a good estimate" to "or even a good estimate". Then you can read that part as "or to get even a good estimate", which is grammatically correct.

This particular problem in #13020 could have been caused by me quoting "|D|" from Feynman, rather than from my discussion of Feynman (which referenced "D"). I might have just assumed that what Feynman wrote and what I was discussing were the same thing. Being careful with quote marks is important.

>> I'm unclear on what Feynman means by D with no subscript. I think variables with no subscript are often used to refer to an entire array, so one thing he could mean is (|D_1| + |D_2| + ... + |D_N|)/N.

> The problem is that the math expression is an average, and "D with no subscript" wouldn't refer to an average.

That is *one* problem, but, as Elliot pointed out at around 23:43 in Commentary: Andy on Tradition; Josh Post-Mortem, my postmortem missed the following problem: there are absolute value signs in my guess as to what Feynman could have meant by "D with no subscript", but, in the context of Feynman's article, "D with no subscript" alone wouldn't involve an absolute value.

> I don't yet know of a reasonable way, using only a calculator, to get the exact answer or even get a good estimate the answer.

As Elliot pointed out at around 21:04 in Commentary: Andy on Tradition; Josh Post-Mortem, there's a missing "of" between "estimate" and "the". To catch this kind of error, he suggests having the computer read what I wrote back to me with text-to-speech (TTS).

I was aware of the TTS suggestion before writing the post, but it seems that I didn't use that suggestion before posting #12994. It's not clear why. Listening with TTS doesn't take very long. (Even so, I don't seem to have been in a rush when writing #12994: it was posted 30 minutes after the post to which it was a reply.)

I missed this error when I analyzed #12994 in a postmortem (#13020). Going forward, I think it would be a good idea for me to listen via TTS to any material on which I'm writing a postmortem.

No, not particularly. I try to avoid false statements and non sequiturs in everything I write, but I haven't specifically *practiced* avoiding them.

> Have you successfully avoided them a bunch of times in the past when doing other stuff?

No.

> Cuz if not, I think you should work on avoiding them with something simpler first. With the math from this thread, you're dealing with two sources of difficulty at once: both 1) avoiding false statements and non sequiturs; and 2) dealing with the semi-complex math topic regarding random walks, square roots, averages, absolute values, etc.

Hmm. Maybe, when I'm dealing with complex stuff, I should exclude false statements and non sequiturs from the list of errors I'm trying to avoid. When I'm doing that, I should probably let people know at the beginning of my message that I'm not concerned with those particular errors. That way they won't bother reporting them.

I watched The Empire Strikes Back in Concert. What happens is you watch the movie on a big screen while a live orchestra plays the score. I was impressed by how good it sounded and by how well the musicians recreated the music I heard before when I watched the movie in theaters or listened to the soundtrack. I was thinking about how much human creativity goes into a single second of that production. First of all, there's the movie, with its sets, lighting, acting, sound design, etc. I don't even know all the things that go into movie-making. And there's the score, composed by John Williams. And I guess most of the musicians have been specializing in their instrument for 20+ years. And they all play together, each at the right time, in the right way, to create the right sound.

So much creativity and specialization and cooperation went into creating each second of that production. It occurred to me that (what remains of) the West is like that. So much human creativity and culture goes into each second of our lives, to create and maintain things like air conditioning, books, windows, computers, video games, clothes, beds, heating, electricity, language, and free speech. All of that is the product of people solving problems, working together, and building on each other's work (as well as some other things I haven't thought of).

Then it occurred to me that our bodies and even our capacity to think are the product of billions of years of evolution by natural selection. That's knowledge creation on a vast scale.

I remembered that some people hate the West. They don't care about all that accumulated knowledge. They want to see it burn like the Library of Alexandria.

I like the West. I don't want to see it burn. I want to see it flourish. If there are sides to be chosen, I want to be on the side of knowledge creation, of the West, and of The Empire Strikes Back in Concert.

> Some fellow students were showing me what they were working on: observing clusters of galaxies – through microscopes. That is how astronomers used to use the Palomar Sky Survey, a collection of 1,874 photographic negatives of the sky, on glass plates, which showed the stars and galaxies as dark shapes on a white background.

> [...]

> As I reached one particularly ambiguous image I asked my hosts, ‘Is that a galaxy or a star?’

> ‘Neither,’ was the reply. ‘That’s just a defect in the photographic emulsion.’

> [...]

> I had overestimated the mass of what I was looking at by some fifty powers of ten.

It's interesting how people raised in the same family/household turn out so different. I have 5 siblings (one in his 30's and 4 in our 40's) and we're all so different. I think we're converging though.

My brother told me of something that happened 20 years ago that I was involved in. I didn't remember at all. Even after he told me about it I don't remember it. He said that our mom was talking about possibly divorcing our dad. He said that he had said that he didn't want our parents to divorce because he didn't want divorced parents. He then said that I had replied to him saying that mom should divorce since she's not happy with the marriage. So I had thought that my mom should be selfish and my brother had wanted mom to sacrifice for his benefit (we didn't know these things in these terms, I expect that my brother still doesn't). Now my brother is on my side on the idea of divorcing if you're not happy with your marriage, despite the downside of the children having to deal with their parents being divorced.

[10:56 AM] curi: Not sure what the situation with food is. I think having food you like, when you want it, is important. One important part of that is being able to control portions, and stop eating when you're no longer hungry, knowing you can get more whenever you're hungry again later. I think eating more when not currently hungry is one of the major common food mistakes in developed countries (ppl often eat typical portions at typical mealtimes, habitually or b/c of someone else's decision, rather than b/c they are that hungry). FYI I think "healthy" eating is overrated and lots of nutrition advice (e.g. to improve energy levels) is just fads, not real science. People look too much for non-intellectual stuff to blame their problems on. Sleep problems have a much more direct effect on intellectual stuff.

[10:57 AM] curi: A lot of sleep issues are, IMO, related to having a schedule – e.g. working 9-5 or going to university classes at a particular time. Unfortunately few lifestyles can avoid that stuff. So you have to manage your sleep around your schedule instead of just sleeping when tired enough to fall asleep quickly and then sleeping as long as needed.

[11:00 AM] curi: Another big issue with food is restrictions forced on kids, so they are deprived of foods they want. This often leads to binging when the person gains more freedom later, and to being irrational about that food. Also forcing kids to eat particular foods, when they don't want to, can lead to hating that food.

[11:01 AM] curi: i think restrictions on sugar, e.g. candy and pop, is a major contributor to their popularity.

[11:02 AM] curi: and there is a lot of pressure to self-impose similar restrictions for adults.

Several days ago, it looks like you had some kind of a DDoS attack on your website that prevented people commenting for 12+ hours. You have put in place countermeasures. Just now, I got a message prompting me to complete a CAPTCHA. I ticked "I'm not a robot" and got in. Complete a CAPTCA just to read your website! Wondering why you haven't explained to your readers the DDoS problem and sought critical feedback here on your solution. Where's the post-mortem?

Homelessness is like unemployment. It’s not natural. The government causes unemployment by making rules to limit hiring and employment. If a job isn’t high enough quality in various ways the government cares about, you can’t have it. You may get no job instead — that’s what involuntary unemployment is. The government also limits housing. If it doesn’t think some housing is good enough, you can’t have it. Some people are literally homeless because they aren’t allowed to have bad housing. Urban renewal programs destroyed like four homes for each one they built ... that and regulations to prevent building housing and/or make it more expensive are the cause of homelessness and parallel minimum wage laws, maximum work hour laws and the like. Government programs that spend tax money to destroy old cars are similar and cause carlessness.

Volvo made at least two different versions of an ad. The version shown in America features a gay male couple holding hands beside a girl who is riding in a toy car. The version shown in Poland features a straight couple holding hands beside a boy who is riding in a toy car.

#13149 The attack is not a DDOS. They are trying to find an insecure URL to hack something. They keep changing URLs so my current caching system is not helping. My cache system is not great and I could improve it later when I have time, but it's been adequate in general.

They change IPs, user agents and URLs so it's tricky to filter. I can set up some rate limiting in nginx and see if that helps. I can also try to match their URLs with some regular expression because they go to URLs no valid users go to and there are some patterns. I'm still busy and will do this later if the attack is still going. If it works well enough, I can disable the Cloudflare under attack mode. I tried disabling the Cloudflare protection a couple days ago but the attack was still happening.

I toned down the Captcha settings. It's the page where you wait a couple seconds, but don't have to do anything, which I believe solved the problem for now.

This is a rails 2.3 site using nginx and passenger. It's on a Linode (Debian server) with memory for 7 instances of passenger for this site. There are lots of pages that take a few seconds to load, e.g. pages with 100+ comments. I consider that acceptable re user experience, but if those pages get spammed and caching doesn't help then it can use up all the available rails processes. (Rails 2.3 processes serve one request at a time.)

As I couldn't find any dedicated discussion thread for coding and it is 2019 I'm posting here.

I use MacOS Mojave.

Right away I ran into a problem. Super basic. After installing Homebrew I can't find nor access /usr/local . In terminal it says that is the path, but from folder I can't find such a place. My OS is running in Swedish. Is that messing things up? If that is the case, how come the path in terminal says "/usr/local ..."?

3) enabling medical tourism fits well with values of ppl into seasteading

4) medical services are a high value item that is heavily regulated and thus costs way more than it should. So the potential margins in this area could justify the expense of building a floating hospital 🏥 🚣‍♀️

I'm new here - found my way via following discussions about the Beginning of Infinity, Popper etc.

To start with: consider a (student) conference you has been invited to present at (after applying - thought it was a good idea at the time) but you are not very inspired (at all) by your work. The work is 'explanationless science'. It's a computer simulation of a situation that attempts to fit some kind of data.

However, the conference is the kind of thing that would 'look good on a resume' and the supervisor is a nice enough person. Is it worth continuing to force myself (I do struggle to put any effort in) to work on the project (which would be finished quite soon)? Or, is it irrational to do so? After finding these websites - most of the time I'd prefer to try and understand all this Philosophy instead.

What kinds of ideas do people have about ways to support oneself but also learn and do good philosophy or scholarly work? I noticed Elliot has his own digital products. Is academia still an effective path at all?

#13231 I do some remote, freelance software engineering too. It's easier to make money that way.

Academia is possible – it can work – but I don't think it's a good option in general. Maybe if someone is already invested in it. But everything else being equal, I think having a pretty easy non-intellectual job (not too draining intellectually or physically, not much physical labor) where you can listen to audio books a fair amount of the time would be better than academia. Getting a philosophy PhD was hell for Peikoff and it's gotten worse, not better, since then. And universities have lots of office politics, social climbing, and SJW crap. It's hard to get professor jobs and to get tenure, and I doubt having tenure makes you half as safe as its reputation (it's supposed to give you the freedom to speak freely and stuff because you don't have to fear being fired). And getting published in academic journals is a mess. This came up in my streams the last few days, which are on my YouTube.

Besides programming, a major option is take what you already like, or are already good at, and get some income from that. That works best if you're high skilled. It's hard to make money out of a hobby or interest that you're average at unless you're particularly good at something else (e.g. making videos with social signaling that people like) or it's an area where it's particularly easy to make money (e.g. if you like to cook and your interest is compatible with working in a restaurant kitchen which is actually pretty different than hobbyist cooking).

#13230 DD has been shifting to the left for years. He liked Rand more in the past. His response on reddit is not representative of the views he had when he developed the ideas in his books and shared his ideas with me.

DD has been trying to pander to the "intellectual elite". This shows a lack of understanding of Rand's explanations of how to live in an irrational society (in VoS) and of the story of Wynand. You can't get people to listen to you by presenting one way, then say your real ideas that you've been hiding (e.g. DD's ideas about parenting or capitalism, which he largely avoids telling anyone about) – that is a bait and switch and people will turn on you, as e.g. Wynand found out when he tried to support Roark and lost his audience.

That is *not* what he ever said to me and is far more hostile to Rand than he used to be. And btw DD gave me explicit permission to publicly say he was a "fan" of Ayn Rand with no qualifiers, exceptions or buts.

> As an observer of people, and of some of the pervasive irrationalities and hangups of our culture (especially the ones she somewhat misleadingly called 'altruism'),

DD didn't do this kind of sniping against Rand in our conversations.

> she was outstanding. As a polemical writer criticising these irrationalities and exposing the harm they do, she was excellent and persuasive. And her optimism and pro-human stances are refreshing and inspiring (and true).

DD refers to e.g. Rand's work on second-handedness without naming it. He's vague on purpose. I think he's partly trying to avoid using Objectivist terminology (which he's fluent in lots of) to distance himself from it.

> But she had a strong tendency to make hyperbolic generalisations and to double down on them with nonsense in order to deflect any potential criticism. Just consider dispassionately, if you can, whether the following statement is true or false:

>

> > "In no case and in no situation may one permit one’s own values to be attacked or denounced, and keep silent".

This is not a random quote. This is chosen specifically from one of the essays DD most misunderstands and/or disagrees with (regarding its main points, not wording details). And, as with ~everything else in philosophy, DD will not debate the matter. He also won't study this seriously. But he knows, correctly, that this is one of the essays he's living his life contrary to and it's one of the ones for him to attack.

And DD is being picky about an issue which he knows (or maybe he forgot since he hasn't read much Rand for decades) is covered a few chapters earlier in the same book. Rand already explained the context of her statement and how to interpret it (as part of a normal situation, not as part of the ethics of emergencies like living in a Nazi state.)

And DD is using sloppy wording himself. "strong tendency"? He ought to know better. During the editing process, I word-searched BoI for certain key words like *probable*, *tends*, *likely* and I went through *every single instance of those words in the entire book* and pointed out *dozens of cases where they should be changed*. He's extremely familiar with the issue of misuse of probability words and similar stuff (I learned that from him).

> The thing is, if literally true, this is a profound discovery in moral philosophy, with dramatic practical implications. But if it is merely a maxim that is true in a certain vaguely defined set of circumstances, and her idea is that people often defer to social convention when they shouldn't, then it is unoriginal and unspectacular though arguably useful in a self-help-book sort of way. She intends the latter meaning but expresses it in terms suggesting the former. As polemic or rhetoric, that's great. As philosophy, it's embarrassing wannabe stuff.

These smears ("self-help-book", "embarrassing wannabe") do not resemble, *at all*, the man I knew. Very very sadly, the DD I knew is gone. He was a great man.

DD has changed his position on Rand without publicly explaining his prior position nor explaining (I'd guess to anyone at all, including himself) what specifically he changed his mind about or why.

> She was (ironically) obsessed with attributes of people rather than of ideas. That's why her followers tend to form themselves into groups with insider/outsider ideologies (somewhat unfairly called 'cults' by her detractors).

"obsessed" is insulting mental illness terminology, contrary to Szasz. DD claims to respect Szasz, who he claims to have read and understood. But, as with other matters, he's gotten worse about it over time. He forgot some stuff and he never fully understood it.

And this is DD is doing socially-calibrated pandering to men like Dawkins, Harris and Pinker. He's shifting his opinions to what they like to hear.

> In regard to fundamental philosophical theory she was hopelessly incompetent and confused. Despite this, her actual conclusions about economics and politics, which don't really follow from these purported foundations, are very good indeed --- though she underestimated the resilience of American and Anglosphere institutions, and indeed underrated the importance of institutions generally. Her main -- perhaps her only -- innovation, was to stress much more than anyone before her that free markets are morally superior to socialism, and that defending them in terms of efficiency only is to concede much of (she would say the whole of!) the opponents' case."

This is totally unlike my dozens of conversations with DD about Objectivism. It's hateful and it hides *why* he's hateful. The whole thing avoids sharing his actual reasoning and just focuses on a few minor issues (plus *vague*, broad statements) that are easier to comment on.

RIP DD.

This is so sad. This might be literally the worst thing he's ever written. There were some bad things after he quit all discussion forums, mostly on twitter, but I don't recall anything this bad. And his posts were far better than this when he used to participate on forums.

It's funny how they put advertisements/marketing/bragging into product titles. Makes sense though when Amazon is going to text me about it and refer to it by title. Helps with how it displays in search results too.

#13248 Cloudflare protection is back on for now. The bots came back after a few days of having it off. I have been busy. I will work on this problem but it may be over a week more before I do. In the meantime, if you don't want to wait you could find new comments via:

I really like the new video postings. Unfortunately I haven't been able to join in live more than once, but having it available afterwards is very good and helps to understand the posts on a deeper level. Just watching the one on twin studies after having read the article a couple of days ago.

I was recently discussing genes and their role in someone's 'temperament' or 'personality'. I doubt I do (need to read DD more closely again), but is this correct reasoning?

1. Genes cause changes in environments.

2. People are born with their own 'unique' genetic make-up. In the sense that they have knowledge that has some variation from their parents/ancestors but obviously some similarities too.

Combining 1 and 2: do two people have their own 'temperaments' due to their initial conditions? Some kind of butterfly/chaos theory effect leading to wildly different/unique outcomes?

If so, is it then correct to say people's personalities are caused by their genes? Even if it's only the initial different interaction with the environment that causes a difference (assuming exactly the same initial environment)? Or is it a question then of: where does the environment interaction begin?

#13257 On free will: we could perhaps argue there's a contradiction between our physical explanation and moral explanation? But they live on different levels of emergence and I don't think I understand how they interact properly. Actually, where is the contradiction? We are assuming that physical reality creates knowledge when we claim determinism contradicts our ability to have problems (free will) aren't we? But the laws of physics don't create knowledge. They certainly allow its existence (humans exist), but it's the evolutionary process that creates knowledge.

#13275 That makes sense. It wouldn't be correct to say the initial conditions are more important to the causation of a 'personality' than any of subsequent interaction either. Each interaction caused that personality. Not any individual interaction.

The above article is a good summary of the conflict between Oberlin College and Gibson's Bakery. It has some fancy writing, but it also mentions all the important facts known to date (at least, all the important facts I know of).

#13320 Decent level of realism. Business stuff that isn't total fluff. E.g. more serious business interactions than Suits had. Less focused on romantic relationships or sex (or jokes) than comparable shows. Pretty plot based instead of episodic.

1. Do you think mental 'cross-training' exists? E.g. doing pure maths or programming or physics helps you think about abstractions more generally and be a better abstract problem-solver or... being a better reader helps you integrate ideas verbally?

Ppl good at conversations keep track of the conversation tree (typically mentally but writing it down is a good idea). Losing track of the tree (of e.g. what comments exist and what is a reply to what and what hasn't been answered) is one of the major ways most ppl fail at discussion. Also making ambiguous comments in regards to how they are adding a node to the tree is a common fail (e.g. saying things where it's unclear what you're replying to).

Archero is a freemium mobile game where you can pay to get better gear way faster

ppl complain about these and there are downsides but

they balanced the game to make it HARD for free players to encourage ppl to buy stuff. but they also have to balance it to be FAIR and POSSIBLE for free players so that ppl don’t think it’s a total BS scam. and they have to balance it to be STILL HARD for ppl who pay, so it’s not just free win if u pay, so the free players can compete and the pay2win players can still have challenges (and pay more on the next level!)

this is, in lots of ways, GOOD, b/c they made the game a bit harder than most ppl can deal with

as opposed to games without in-game purchases to power up, where they balance games to be FUCKING EASY so everyone feels good or something

I'm enjoying the game.

I've spent $62 so far (buying the chapter packs) which is an unimportant amount of money relative to the time i've played. I delayed spending money, and am careful about it, b/c i didn't want to accidentally make the game too easy. But I did want to save some time on grinding up better gear.

The game also tries to make money off ads. They're all technically optional but for some stuff it's worth sometimes letting an ad run while u do something else unless ur gonna spend a hundreds of dollars. I think they should let you spend $10 so that you can get all the ad based stuff like normal except the ads just don't play. Just permanently disable ads while still getting the same benefits as ppl who play the ads.

I finished chapter 5 yesterday (and hero mode chapter 2 literally the game before), just under a week after i first got the game.

The game controls are just a virtual joystick to move your character. You shoot automatically (it will automatically aim at a target) when standing still. You have to dodge stuff and kill the enemies.

Each game you level up frequently and pick skills from a random choice of skills. When you die you go back to the beginning of the chapter for the next game and you get a new skill build. The variety is nice. There are some mechanisms for gradual permanent progress.

How does one correct errors in logical/mathematical reasoning efficiently? Most of the time you can explain where exactly your misunderstanding is, and the flaw in your solution. However:

1. The correction of THAT error only seems applicable to that problem.

2. There's kind of a bedrock level of correction.

Example to explain (2): you mess up some calculation and after seeing a worked solution or something you go ohhh yeah I didn't carry the 3 or whatever. However, to then correct the error of WHY didn't you carry the three seems mysterious - and it gets more mysterious the more complex the problem.

Any advice?

This problem may apply to abstract reasoning more generally as well - will the continual *conscious* correction of errors seep into your subconscious, so it starts correcting errors before reaching the top level of your conscious mind?

> Facebook has a 'homosexuality' interest in the ad targeting options, including in some counties where homosexuality is illegal. Of course, advertisers don't get any personal data about who sees an ad... except that you could target people with ads that might then try to elicit personal information ('enter your email to get a free pizza!') ... which could be very not good. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

#13387 Search on Google including the term site:curi.us or click "More" on the left sidebar and look for the text:

> View all posts on one page. (With comments too.)

> View a list of all posts.

Those pages let you search post titles, posts, or posts with comments. The posts will take a while to load, especially with comments too, and I wouldn't try it on mobile. If you have trouble with it, you can right click the link and download the page and then search in a text editor or something else.

Can it be considered immoral to work as a primary and/or high school teacher in today's society? As TCS/good philosophy exists - is it right for any person to work as teacher considering they will be forced to teach some standard curriculum?

I haven't tried to follow the instructions myself, but I thought it was notable how detailed they were. For example, the pdf instructions call for a specific number of strips of tape, each of which must be a particular size and must be applied in a particular order.

> That said, there are also many who consider this to be one of his best performances. And among that group are trolls, professional bigots, white supremacists, Nazi sympathizers and more of the very worst white people; an adoration due to the parallels between their sensibilities and his.

Some of my favorite parts of Sticks & Stones are the part starting at around 14 minutes and the part from around minute 22 to around minute 35. The latter contains the following gem, which I will quote only in part in order to avoid spoiling it:

> ... what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was breaking an unwritten and unspoken rule of show business ... no matter what you do in your artistic expression, you are never, ever, allowed to upset the alphabet people.

#13417 My link to theroot.com was broken. There was a newline between the link title and the URL. Maybe I thought it had been word-wrapped to the next line. I'm unclear on what I should do to better notice this problem going forward. Maybe I need to understand word-wrapping better. Maybe I need to rely less on markdownlivepreview.com (*). Maybe it would be easier to spot errors that might pertain to word-wrapping if I dragged the curi.us compose window to be larger horizontally.

(*) I often use markdownlivepreview.com to preview my curi.us comments before posting. The link displayed fine there. I know markdownlivepreview.com is flawed for previewing curi.us comments, but it catches some errors, and doesn't take much time to use.

Successful surgery requires clean surgical instruments. However, cleaning those instruments is a high-stress, low-wage job. The people doing this job are frequently rushed by doctors and hospital management, and they frequently make mistakes. Even when they follow the manufacturer's cleaning instructions, human gunk frequently remains on the instruments. This can result in surgical infections which, as the top HN comment says, are especially serious:

>> As I have told my patients and medical students, a surgical infection is a life altering event. There is a good chance that you will never be the same after experiencing it.

Evidence of astonishingly bad cleaning cited in the article:

> Wilkinson said Smith & Nephew inspected 72 [arthroscopic] shavers at eight hospitals and surgery centers, and that all but three of the devices contained “residuals” after cleaning by hospital staff.

> Azizi, at the University of Michigan Health System, said in addition to surgical suction tips, his team also inspected 15 arthroscopic shavers. He found biological material and other debris in all of them.

Apparently the surgical instrument cleaners are told to do an especially careful cleaning job when someone "important" is on the operating table:

> Except when an important person or a doctor’s family member is on the table, that is. “They call and say, ‘Dr. Jones’ wife is having surgery,’” Green-Golden said. “You didn’t call when I was having surgery. You didn’t call when my momma was having surgery.”

> > Except when an important person or a doctor’s family member is on the table, that is. “They call and say, ‘Dr. Jones’ wife is having surgery,’” Green-Golden said. “You didn’t call when I was having surgery. You didn’t call when my momma was having surgery.”

That means two people paying the same price get different service. That's anti-capitalist.

That is a society of *status, not contract*. That's one of the arch evils.

#13416 Follow up post: what do people think of these kinds of questions? Do you think that if one completed many of them their logical analysis i.e. ability to correct logical errors, hold abstract logical chains of reasoning in their head, notice them day to day in their own life etc, would improve? Or is there something that'd be more effective?

> Your alleged follow up on #13416 does not do the thing #13416 said to: post examples.

To see examples, click on any of the three introductory quizzes ('Warmup puzzles', 'Truth-seeking' or 'Strategic deductions'), which one can access via the link in #13433. There you will see the available solutions (they're multiple choice questions) and if you click 'show explanation' you will see their solutions.

I thought that ^ was implied, but it was wrong to assume familiarity with the website.

There are 3 boxes, exactly one of which contains gold. You can keep the gold if you pick the correct box! On each box there is a statement, exactly one of which is true.

Box 1: The gold is in this box.

Box 2: The gold is not in this box.

Box 3: The gold is not in box 1.

*My solution*

Box 1 and Box 3 can't be true at the same time, so one has to be false. Therefore, we have two cases.

Case 1: Box 1's statement is false.

This would imply that the gold is not in Box 1 and the other two statements are true. Box 3's statement is true. Box 2's statement is false though, which contradicts 'exactly one' of the statements being true.

So, Case 2 must be correct, we just need to find out where the gold is.

Case 2: Box 2's statement is false.

This would imply that the gold is in box 2.

*Their solution*

If Box 2 contains the gold, then

- the statement on Box 1 would be false (it's not in Box 1);

- the statement on Box 2 would be false (it is in Box 2);

- only the statement on Box 3 is true (yes, the gold is not in Box 1).

Thus, it looks like the gold is in Box 2! But, let's rule out the other possibilities to double check.

If Box 1 contains the gold, then

- the statements on both Box 1 and Box 2 are true, so this is impossible.

If Box 3 contains the gold, then

- the statements on both Box 2 and Box 3 are true, so this is impossible.

*Question*

So, what do you guys think of these kinds of questions?

Do you think that if one completed many of them (at the right skill level, not overreaching) their logical analysis i.e. ability to correct logical errors, hold abstract logical chains of reasoning in their head, notice them day to day in their own life etc, would improve? Or is there something that'd be more effective?

That question is alright. Maybe it'd help. But I think a lot of people use Brilliant and don't learn much, so I think something more is required than just doing it.

Also you did the question poorly but I don't think you would have learned that just from doing it + reading Brilliant's answer. Your division into two cases was disorganized and confusing. It was a typical approach that can make sense in normal contexts but it wasn't customized for this particular problem where two of the statements are false. Also the text "This would imply that the gold is not in Box 1 and the other two statements are true." is wrong. Actually your version has multiple errors. If you could actually get stuff like that right I think it'd be an improvement, but in this case reading Brilliant's answer didn't lead you to notice the errors in your own answer, and I fear that would happen with many other problems.

Also Brilliant's answer doesn't explain methodology. It doesn't tell you how to think about the problem. It just jumps straight into details without really explaining what's going on. They don't say why they do the steps they do. So it's not very educational.

Also:

> post examples (problems + your solutions + their answers)

I don't think reading that wrong (or ignoring it), twice, was a skill issue. I think it was *not* illiteracy or bad logic. It's more of an attitude issue, a choice. I don't think practicing with Brilliant will address that problem.

You are right, I did not explain everything in clear or sufficient detail.

> It was a typical approach that can make sense in normal contexts but it wasn't customized for this particular problem where two of the statements are false.

How so?

> If you could actually get stuff like that right I think it'd be an improvement, but in this case reading Brilliant's answer didn't lead you to notice the errors in your own answer, and I fear that would happen with many other problems.

Makes sense. What were my other errors?

> Also Brilliant's answer doesn't explain methodology. It doesn't tell you how to think about the problem. It just jumps straight into details without really explaining what's going on. They don't say why they do the steps they do. So it's not very educational.

That makes sense too - it wouldn't help at all if one didn't notice their errors even after the supposed error correcting mechanism (their explanation) was shown.

> I don't think reading that wrong (or ignoring it), twice, was a skill issue. I think it was *not* illiteracy or bad logic. It's more of an attitude issue, a choice. I don't think practicing with Brilliant will address that problem.

Agreed. I think it is the same error that caused me to write my solution in a disorganized and confused way.

The problem says exactly one of the statements is true. That gives us three cases: Box 1's statement is true, Box 2's statement is true or Box 3's statement is true.

We can rule out Box 2's statement being true because that would imply that Box 1 and Box 3's statements are both false. But, Box 1 and Box 3's statements contradict each other, so both statements can't be both false (or true) at the same time. That leaves us with Box 1 or Box 3's statement being true. Thus, we have two cases.

Case 1: Box 1's statement is true and the other two are false.

This causes a contradiction between the Box 1's statement (which is taken to be true in this case) and Box 2's statement (which is taken to be false in this case). This case leads to a contradiction so we can dispense with it.

So, Case 2 must be correct, we just need to find out where the gold is.

Case 2: Box 3's statement is true and the other two are false.

If Box 3's statement is true then the gold cannot be Box 1. This is good because it doesn't contradict Box 1's statement being false, which itself implies Box 1 doesn't have the gold. That leaves us with Box 2's statement being false, which implies it has the gold. The statements' truth values (in this case) are non-contradictory with the gold in Box 2.

Is this better? It should have all the details that were missing from the last solution.

The way I did it, which is also what Brilliant's solution does, is consider the three cases for where the gold is, then evaluate which statements are true given that gold placement.

> You are right, I did not explain everything in clear or sufficient detail.

That's not what I meant. The two case method you used is still more confusing, and harder, even if you got everything right and explained more. It has more steps and more and longer chains of logic.

If you say "ok, let's assume the gold is in box 1" then you can evaluate each of the three box's labels next and they are all easy at that point. the chains of thought only reach 2 steps. (3 steps chains if you count "let's go through the 3 boxes, 1 by 1" as the first step). This is because all the labels make claims about where the gold is, so knowing where the gold is makes those claims simple to evaluate.

Evaluating box labels given the truth or falsity of other box labels is more confusing. That's because the labels are easy to evaluate in terms of where the gold is. But they aren't directly about the truth or falsity of other labels, so you have to do a two-step chain: figure out what (possibly partial) information you have about gold location from the label truth or falsity, then take that gold location info and use it to evaluate another label. This is both an extra step, and harder steps, compared to the other method.

I liked this vid. Molyneux sucks. Despite his flaws, Tew has great points sometimes (this is 2 years old, he hasn't uploaded for over a month, not much since making a fool of himself by being dishonest with/about Rucka). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIdWAa-0oOw

Try to solve things multiple ways and then compare the solutions to see which are better and why.

Don't try to stop early. If you don't know what the key issues are, in simple terms, you could improve it.

These things are crucial for practice/learning, and they also apply most of the time in scenarios where the main goal is to get the project done successfully. But be aware in some cases, getting it done at all and moving on, even with a kinda bad solution, is appropriate.

[ancient Romans] specific plumbing techniques, based on lead pipes, which poisoned their drinking water, contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.

DD doesn't provide a reference. He just gives an explanationless assertion (ironically, in a chapter emphasizing the importance of explanations). The conjecture is a myth and was known to be so at the time of publication of FoR:

> This work has shown that the labile fraction of sediments from Portus and the Tiber bedload attests to pervasive Pb contamination of river water by the Pb plumbing controlling water distribution in Rome. Lead pollution of “tap water” in Roman times is clearly measurable, but unlikely to have been truly harmful. The discontinuities punctuating the Pb isotope record provide a strong background against which ideas about the changing character of the port can be tested.

#13464 - like just now when I hit reply the box starts small and then jumps to screen width when I start typing. But now it is hard to read the comments and text above and the font is scaled up. So I'm pinch zooming and that makes the comment box small and sometimes it doesn't resize back to screen width when I type in it.

When I say hard to read comments above I mean when I scroll up from the text input I have to also scroll across because the text is enlarged. And then it is easy to get into a mess if you are copy pasting text.

JustinCEO: well i would say this. chats are okay but i think they are more supplementary.

But I think you kinda like chats. And you had like a 500 message chat with Freeze after saying this, which seems more than supplementary.

Seems a bit "Do as I say, not as I do."

> curi's blog comments are better than chat tho not as good as email.

I think they're about as good as email in terms of format. Some upsides, some downsides. Culturally ppl treat FI list more seriously but I encourage ppl to treat curi seriously, I think it's generally easier to use for ppl (at least if they go find a quiet topic to use instead of using the open discussion one when multiple ppl are talking about multiple things).

Freeze: i've been trying to figure out how to think but apparently that's a strange question to ask

That's a good question, I don't see what's strange.

Freeze: has Elliot ever gone back and criticized some of his old ideas?

JustinCEO: sure. less so recently cuz he doesn't get much criticism on his current ideas that he hasn't already seen.

What? I don't get how lack of recent crit would be a reason *not* to self-crit older stuff. Seems like a reason *to* do it.

[6:54 AM] Freeze: this idea of sacrificing yourself for the greater good as ultimately being counterproductive, and that it's better to prioritize yourself first and help others when it's cheap and easy

> I think I interpret this idea as... if we prioritize the autonomy of people, we will be creative in finding ways to do things easily rather than at great personal cost, which in the long-term will drive progress. Maybe the EA strategy is more short-term effective but long-term counterproductive since it almost stymies progress on making things cheaper/easier?

Yeah the best strategy, in short, is *capitalism*. That is where wealth comes from. Charity stuff is about how to divide up the pie (total wealth). Capitalism is about making the pie bigger. And capitalism is so powerful that it can make the pie so much bigger that everyone ends up with way more pretty regardless of distribution.

Freeze: i think there was one idea i heard about, maybe from deutsch, that was to have large space panels to reflect sunlight away

[6:58 AM] Freeze: and it just made me realize.. as far as i can tell, we've barely been considering ideas that aren't about reducing emissions or ejecting/storing CO2

Be careful mistaking *what you hear about in the press* for *what humanity has considered*. Some people are working on good stuff. There is a scientist bias, but there is a larger press bias than scientist bias. The press (and other mechanisms of mass communcation) make the bias look bigger than it is cuz they are really biased people.

> I had never even considered the possibility of something like blocking sunlight, and it made me wonder what other possibilities are we just not thinking about because we're so focused on certain aspects to the detriment of others?

There are so many ideas people won't even think about. If it gets hot, Canada will be really nice (and it's really got a lot of land for the number of people). Maybe the Mexicans and others nearer the equator can move there... antarctica could become habitable too.

> so in a way I wonder if EA has some of the same pitfalls, in that if we look at maximizing good for people at any cost to the sacrificers, are we missing out on better ways to address the problem because we're allocating our attention/creativity in the wrong direction?

win/win solutions are possible. sacrifice is a sign something is going wrong.

[7:01 AM] JustinCEO: one is that various proposals to cut America's CO2 emissions won't actually do the job of reducing them enough according to the models of the people advocating them

[7:01 AM] Freeze: right

[7:02 AM] Freeze: is it that they just don't know of a better alternative to advocate for?

No, it's that the global warming movement doesn't actually care about the environment, they care about socialism and shutting down industry. shutting down first world industry *is their actual goal*.

JustinCEO: so they just want to reduce industrial production in exchange for nothing

cuz it's an end in itself, it's their goal! and there are reasons for that. there are reasons they are anti-capitalism, anti-technology, etc.

JustinCEO: their goal is to reduce human impact on the earth, and to have a more wild, untamed planet in which humans are less significant, as an end in itself

Yeah that is one of their actual reasons and motiviations. Various pieces of Marxism is another big one.

> i just never knew about >, which is so simple and even looks better

discord just added block quotes recently.

> it's so cool how all of these ideas are so linked

Well I had thousands of discussions with DD. DD was the founder of Taking Children Seriously (where the "coercion" idea you mentioned comes from). There have been ongoing email list discussions for many years where people develop ideas. They are linked because they weren't created separately. Yeah there is the general issue of truth being linked with other truth, and ideas fitting together. That's cool. But the bigger thing here is you're looking at a bunch of ideas developed by the same people (mostly me and DD) who were in communication, talking a lot, so that's why it fits together.

JustinCEO: see i think Alan has in mind there an idea of like, error being an acceptable state, and he's contradicting that

Alan was joking around.

Freeze: is there any such thing as making an error less erroneous but still an error, or are all errors equally erroneous?

Epistemology works better if you formulate clear problems with success and failure criteria which define what is an error (failure) and what isn't. It works better with a focus on two categories. Other problem specifications cause trouble.

> that... a lot of what we know has some elements of truth, and some elements of falsity, and we don't always know how to tell the difference between the two, but we can get better at differentiating between them, and that represents progress towards the truth?

That's fine as an approximation. One of the nuances it approximates is that an idea can solve one problem but fail to solve a different problem – it works in one way but not another.

Freeze: so this means two people discussing something could both have a different idea of the specific problem

[7:52 AM] Freeze: and so one could perceive error and another could perceive no error

Yeah, it's really important not just to talk about solutions or claims, but also what the problem(s) or goal(s) actually are.

[7:59 AM] JustinCEO: emojis are okay ionno.

??? u like emojis!

Freeze: is there any way that eliminating logs could represent progress

Normal mainstream people mostly dislike logs because they don't want to be expected to use them, nor have their old messages stalked, nor have the logs shared. They don't want good records of what they said b/c they contradict themselves and lie and shit. People don't want their own words used against them. They want to be able to misremember things and then agree to disagree about it. Also look at Snapchat and why people use that. It's related.

BTW discord is hostile to bots that do logging, they don't want that.

> but in this case it might be like 20 hours of dev time or

FYI that's an extremely low estimate for adding logging to discord.

Freeze: huh... so on one hand it's like that use of diversity almost segregates people more

Intellectual diversity has merit but that's not what the diversity ppl want. Caring about racial diversity is racist. Caring about gender diversity is sexist. etc. They are collectivist bigots who are seeking special favors for particular groups.

> it's kind of cool that wealth creation is a concept we take for granted today

it's not though. there is so much opposition to it. e.g. the EA community doesn't like Objectivism and capitalism. (and, as is my complaint about most groups for most issues, won't productively debate that matter to a conclusion.)

> so is Ayn saying that the fear caused by whips and guns and threats of life is fundamentally different from the fear caused by economic insecurity/feeling like you'll be homeless/starve if you don't keep your job

> JustinCEO: well i would say this. chats are okay but i think they are more supplementary.

> But I think you kinda like chats. And you had like a 500 message chat with Freeze after saying this, which seems more than supplementary.

> Seems a bit "Do as I say, not as I do."

That's fair. I had a thought along those lines during the chat. But there aren't many high energy people who come to the chat so I was happy to do heavy chatting for a while.

>> curi's blog comments are better than chat tho not as good as email.

> I think they're about as good as email in terms of format. Some upsides, some downsides. Culturally ppl treat FI list more seriously but I encourage ppl to treat curi seriously, I think it's generally easier to use for ppl (at least if they go find a quiet topic to use instead of using the open discussion one when multiple ppl are talking about multiple things).

ok.

> Freeze: i've been trying to figure out how to think but apparently that's a strange question to ask

> That's a good question, I don't see what's strange.

yeah i agree.

> Freeze: has Elliot ever gone back and criticized some of his old ideas?

> JustinCEO: sure. less so recently cuz he doesn't get much criticism on his current ideas that he hasn't already seen.

> What? I don't get how lack of recent crit would be a reason *not* to self-crit older stuff. Seems like a reason *to* do it.

oh yeah. i had a thought that this reply was mistaken but i forgot to follow up on it.

i think I got confused and was partially replying to something else, like "has curi gone back and revised some of his old ideas?" or something.

> [7:59 AM] JustinCEO: emojis are okay ionno.

> ??? u like emojis!

well they're fine but i dunno that I would say they're awesome. and we were talking about adding emojis, and a lot of the emojis they have added were for like diversity purposes (to make sure everyone can have the right skin tone vampire or whatever 🧛🏿‍♂️) which I had in mind as I wrote my comment and which I think is a bit silly.

>and we were talking about adding emojis, and a lot of the emojis they have added were for like diversity purposes (to make sure everyone can have the right skin tone vampire or whatever 🧛🏿‍♂️) which I had in mind as I wrote my comment and which I think is a bit silly.

I thought they added those around because stuff like Animoji's and bitmoji's are popular, and people can use these kinda the same.

do you think everything should just be default yellow or white? why is it worse to allow ppl to change the skin tones?

> #13465 how do you want it to work? And use the quote link instead of scrolling up for quotes.

The quote link is fine for quoting one comment but if you want to look back over other comments while replying and also read/include stuff from other comments you need to scroll up. Same if you accidently delete stuff while replying.

Focusing the comment box shouldn't cause other text to rescale and go off the side of the screen. When I hit reply/quote the comment box is initially about half the screen width with tiny text. Everything magnifies and rescales after focusing. So I suggest make the comment box have text in the same font as everything above and initially at the width of the screen so it doesn't rescale on focus.

>> and we were talking about adding emojis, and a lot of the emojis they have added were for like diversity purposes (to make sure everyone can have the right skin tone vampire or whatever 🧛🏿‍♂️) which I had in mind as I wrote my comment and which I think is a bit silly.

> I thought they added those around because stuff like Animoji's and bitmoji's are popular, and people can use these kinda the same.

oh competing with Animoji and bitmoji makes sense. i saw a bunch of news articles talking about emojis getting more diverse and kinda vaguely thought it was for SJW kinda reasons.

> do you think everything should just be default yellow or white?

before reconsidering, i liked the yellow.

> why is it worse to allow ppl to change the skin tones?

i think maybe i have some negative connotations cuz a lot of the use of skin tone emojis i've seen have been brown/black fists by lefties on Twitter in contexts involving their left-wing politics, violence, etc 👊🏿✊🏾

> Rami, Popperian Epistemology is taught in University Philosophy Departments.

>

> How do YOU know it is not?

Where are all these people who learn Popper in school? Wouldn't I have met a bunch of them. Brett is unreasonable. And, anyway, Rafe Champion investigated this.

RC in 2009:

> I have been perplexed over the years by the number of times that I have read and heard views attributed to Popper which don't sound quite the same as the ideas of the man himself, at least as I understood him.

> This prompted some questions about what was being taught to undergraduates and in 1989 I surveyed the undergraduate courses and reading lists in Philosophy, Politics and Sociology in the (then) 21 Australian universities. The objective was to find what they were being told about Popper and Hayek who I regarded as the twin pillars of anti-scientism and classical liberalism. The short answer is that you had to be very lucky to get more than a passing reference to Popper and the situation with Hayek was worse.

> Round about 1998 I wanted to repeat the survey but there were more than 50 universities thanks to the recruitment of a heap of minor colleges who used to award diplomas in teaching, arts and crafts, rural studies etc. So instead I searched 200+ websites of philosophy schools, mostly in the US but also a few others like Cambridge. The story was the same, Popper rated a mention as a part of the convulsion in the field that involved Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and the sociology of science. No indication that his contribution was more robust or extended into other fields where he did first order work - evolutionary epistemology, logic and probabililty theory, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, history of ideas, politics and the social sciences. Cambridge at that time was arguable the worst course in the world in terms of keeping positivism alive!

> ...

> So again I wondered about the contents of introductory books on philosophy and promptly borrowed ten or a dozen from the local public library to do a serious study. Some of these books are written for popular consumption, some are written to support uni courses. They are all written by academics and they are published by reputable presses so even if they keep it simple they should also keep it accurate.

> All that I have examined so far present a more or less distorted account of Popper's ideas. Some of the errors are repeated, almost word for word, suggesting that there is some primary source that they are drawing on (not yet identified because they don't tend to quote with citations, they just have reading lists at the end of the book or the chapter).

RC in 2011:

> FWIW I have been making a more or less systematic study of misconceptions about Popper, starting with a survey of about 45 introductory philosophy texts in the three nearest public libraries.

> One of the misconceptions in many texts is that Popper is just a philosopher of science and not an epistemologist, so you will probablyl find Popper mispresented in the philosophy of science chapter but not mentioned at all in the chapter on epistemology!

#13478 I don't think I would try mindfulness meditation because I don't know what the standard is to judge whether you're doing it in a way where you can make progress. My guess is that it's similar to learning how to pay attention during lecture or when reading books, but instead you're learning how to pay attention to your breath.

I have trouble understanding what the abstract concept of a mistake is. Can anyone help me out? Like you could tell me where I could get explanations of what a mistake is? I think one thing that might help me is to see what some examples of mistakes are. I kind of blank out when I try to come up with examples or an explanation of a mistake off the spot.

As a young adult, I am trying to work out the best skills to develop to navigate through life. You can probably tell, just by writing here, I think they are reason, thinking clearly, efficiently and effectively. So, that is my number one priority.

However, those skills are hard to trade (you can't setup a 'reason' store near your house and expect people to pay you) in a market-place. To my understanding, it seems as though the best skill to power up in, is programming. Because, even if you wanted to do more than just support yourself, it is the most flexible high skilled career. That is, if you wanted to help fix the schooling system somehow, because programming as a money earning skill is so flexible, you could spend all your flex time learning about TCS or coming up with plans etc. And, you'd still be able to put food on your table.

Like, people could choose also freelance journalism, that sounds flexible too. But, there seems to be a lot more BS to deal with in that field. And, what constitutes high skill seems less well understood and poorly paid in comparison.

Do people agree? Or, do they have any other suggestions for what could be a great flexible skill to power up in that could also earn them money to live off (in the future)?

> However, those skills are hard to trade (you can't setup a 'reason' store near your house and expect people to pay you) in a market-place. To my understanding, it seems as though the best skill to power up in, is programming.

Philosophy – rational thinking, how to learn, how to judge ideas, etc. – is the best skill to power up in. It lets you learn programming, among other things.

For *financial* skills, programming is the best. It's not the best for everyone – it depends on your situation – but overall, on average, I can't think of anything superior.

I still get the majority of my income from programming – at home, on my own schedule, and also I do projects alone, I haven't worked with other programmers for years.

> Like, people could choose also freelance journalism, that sounds flexible too.

I think it's really hard to make much money doing that.

I have a more favorable opinion of YouTuber, Twitch streamer, or, hell, freelance philosopher. Charles Tew had his Patreon income up to $1500/month after like two years of making podcasts and videos like once or twice a week. Surely, with skill, there are ways to do better – *if* you're good at philosophy, *then* that doesn't sound to me like a harder or worse option than freelance journalism.

If you need an income *while* you learn philosophy, the problem with learning programming and getting going in a career in it is that it's a huge distraction, a big delay on learning philosophy, a big piece of your life where you aren't prioritizing your philosophy education. You may make tons of decisions, some lasting, before getting around to doing more philosophy.

So a very reasonable option is to work a non-special job. Just something that isn't too tiring and lets you listen to audio books a lot of the time. And be poor. Or if your family has some money – or really even if they don't – that can work pretty well especially if you live very cheaply at home, then maybe you can work part time or not at all for a while, or maybe you can spend your college fund but skip college – it'd be for the purpose of getting an education, anyway. But your parents might not be supportive – they might be skeptical and think you're lazy.

What if you're older? Well then I imagine you already have a career of some sort, or at least a job. If you've already got a job, and bills to pay, maybe even kids, and you're going to learn something on the side, I'd generally recommend just doing philosophy over the three-part plan of learning programming then changing careers then doing philosophy.

[4:15 PM] TheRat: curi clearly has autism and has no idea how to socialize, take jokes or even understand what people are saying in-explicitly. Trying to build a philosophical world view based on his failure to understand people is a ridiculous endeavor. Now I know why DD wants nothing to do with this wanna be nonsense. This isn't Philosophy, this is a cult!

I am out. Gl to the rest of you who have drank his holy kool-aid. I hope you can deprogram yourselves and see him for the farce that he is. Can't even tel Discord Warrior is a troll.

That's a really good point. Don't have to be rich to become a better thinker.

I also listened in the 'Humans matter' podcast. I liked it. I was wondering, do you think there is a general purpose way an individual can engage in to help mainstream institutions error correct?

A good example is education. Is there an approachable way an individual can take to tilt it towards better philosophy (assuming they've learnt about the philosophy beforehand, which would be the first step)?

> do you think there is a general purpose way an individual can engage in to help mainstream institutions error correct?

Write, YouTube, podcast.

> A good example is education. Is there an approachable way an individual can take to tilt it towards better philosophy

Approachable in what sense? You don't specify which obstacles you're concerned with. I don't know how to make school boards approachable.

I think writing, YouTubing and podcasting about education are approachable.

> (assuming they've learnt about the philosophy beforehand, which would be the first step)?

For most people, learning the philosophy beforehand is by far the least approachable step. Almost no one ever does that.

Learning it correctly requires error-correcting discussion, not just reading stuff and thinking you get it. And there's a lot to learn.

Also, hardly anyone learns *both* Critical Rationalism *and* Objectivism. But disliking either one indicates a major problem (there's some reason one dislikes one of the best things that exists) and major ignorance (missing out on tons of the best philosophy knowledge that exists).